It Happened in "Jurassic Park"

It's a movie. It's just fiction. And yet how many people picked up random genetic engineering and dinosaur "facts" from this movie? Almost every non-scientist that I know outgrew his or her dinosaur obsession around the age of 12 but picked up the rest of their dinosaur trivia from the movies and mind of Michael Crichton.

But I have to give some credit to the film's creepy spin on reproduction. In recent news, an all female group of hammerhead sharks found a way to reproduce without a male counterpart:

"Researchers from the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida and Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland found no male DNA in the female baby shark, which was born in December 2001 and died shortly after birth, apparently killed by another fish. The mother was one of three female bonnetheads, a small hammerhead species, that had been captured in Florida and kept without male sharks for three years in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha."- New York Times

This immediately brought to mind a particular scene from the film, reproduced below:

DR. HENRY WU

You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will... breed?


DR. IAN MALCOLM
No, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.


Cue Creepy Music

I'm sure glad nothing like this happened in my all female dorm room in college.