֎ Soon everyone will be able to have their own Jackson 5.

In some farmers’ ideal world, cows would birth only females, sows would bear no boars, and chicks would all grow up to be hens. Such sex ratios would stop them from killing millions of male animals, which don’t produce eggs or milk.

Now, scientists are a step closer to this reality. Researchers have harnessed the gene editor CRISPR to produce litters of mice all of one sex. That’s a potential boon to agriculture and may offer a more immediate advantage in scientific research. “The paper shows a state-of-the-art solution to producing single-sex species” with “impressive results,” says Ehud Qimron, a CRISPR expert at Tel Aviv University who was not involved with the work.

Finally humans can match whiptail lizards (genus Aspidoscelis) who are only female.

֎ Here’s a picture of your oldest cousin, called “Lucy’s Baby”. In 1974, the world was stunned by the discovery of “Lucy,” the partial skeleton of a human ancestor that walked upright—and still spent time in the trees—3.2 million years ago. Later discoveries revealed her species, scattered throughout eastern Africa, had brains bigger than chimpanzees. But a new study of an ancient toddler finds that the brains of Lucy’s kind were organized less like those of humans and more like those of chimps. That suggests the brains of our ancestors expanded before they reorganized in the ways that let us engage in more complex mental behaviors such as making tools and developing language. The remains also suggest Lucy’s species had a relatively long childhood—similar to modern humans—and they would have needed parenting longer than their chimp relatives. Called Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy and her family grew to a height of three feet.

To get a glimpse of the future of Homo sapiens, here’s a snapshot for you:

Yes, she is a fully conversant robot.

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Cannot leave without quoting Mark Twain who had this to say about human morality:

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man.

Ancient Mariner