"The genes they inherited from their pirates"
Laura Baisas, “We were very wrong about birds”, Popular Science 4/1/2024:
Birds combine genes from a father and a mother into the next generation, but they first mix the genes they inherited from their pirates when creating sperm and eggs. This process is called recombination and it is also something that occurs in humans. Recombination maximizes a species’ genetic diversity by ensuring that no two siblings are exactly the same.
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