How Sex Became a Thing

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to http://to.pbs.org/DonateEons ↓ More info below ↓ We don’t know which living thing was the very first to arrive at the totally revolutionary process that is sexual reproduction but we can follow the history of how (and why) sex became a thing. Thanks to Studio 252mya for their illustrations. You can find more of their work here: https://252mya.com/licensing Produced for PBS Digital Studios. Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eonsshow Twitter - https://twitter.com/eonsshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/eonsshow/ References: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5870/1660.long https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4413262/#s4title https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080401-first-sex.html https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/sexual-reproduction-and-the-evolution-of-sex-824 http://www.indiana.edu/~curtweb/Research/Red_Queen%20hyp.html http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/6/3/a016154.full http://www.genetics.org/content/181/1/3.full https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossils-rewrite-history-of-sex/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19464181 https://www.britannica.com/science/Ediacara-fauna https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40333/title/The-Sex-Paradox/ https://www.britannica.com/science/reproduction-biology/Reproduction-of-organisms#ref607656 http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/6/1/a016121.full https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4640172/ https://www.britannica.com/animal/Hydra-hydrozoan-genus https://www.britannica.com/science/algae/Reproduction-and-life-histories https://www.britannica.com/science/meiosis-cytology https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-plant/fossils-from-1-6-billion-years-ago-may-be-oldest-known-plants-idUSKBN16L2GH