Why does anybody—I mean why does any organism—have sex? The amount of energy we put into it is crazy. We spend billions on lipstick and hair product. About every third advertisement in any medium is for a car—one with plenty of sex appeal. We get our pants pressed, our nails done, and we work hard to smell nice—all to attract a mate, one that will enable us to have sex and offspring. Why do we go to all the trouble of attracting a mate? Why not just get this literally vital task done on our own? Why not just let our lips be lips and drive around in gray, featureless blob cars? It’s not as if sex is the only way to reproduce. We humans could, for example, just split ourselves in half, DNA, bones, muscles, brains and all, like any self-unaware, or perhaps self-respecting, bacterium. The separate pieces form new membranes and boundaries as they separate. A replica of the DNA from the parent is built on each side—I mean, inside each of the two individuals that emerge from the original.
