GET SHORTIES Small gentlemen

Men will be extinct in around 125,000 years, leaving behind a race of self-sufficient lesbians able to reproduce without sperm, says an Oxford University genetics professor.

According to Bryan Sykes, due to defects in the Y chromosome which can cause it to disintegrate over many generations resulting in male infertility, women may have to begin reproducing by themselves, a possibility that turns out not to be such a long shot, given that "artificial sperm produced from bone-marrow cells has already led to pregnancies and live births in mice." The births from female mice pairings were perfectly normal, except that the resulting baby mice were 20 percent smaller than mice with parents of both genders.

Should you get into a chat with one of your smartypants science-y friends about this eventuality over the holidays, the short version is: Someday the few remaining men on the planet will all be pocket-sized, just like Tom Cruise, which will lead all of us women to start, let's say, eating sushi off the barber shop floor.

What this means for the current election, we're not so sure.

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