Can two snakes have a baby turtle? Can two turtles have baby alligators? Of course not. The ability to produce exact or close copies of the original organism is important for the continuation of life. Reproduction is an important characteristic of all living organisms. Most unicellular organisms reproduce by a type of asexual reproduction called mitosis. During mitosis, a single parent cell splits into two identical daughter cells. Multicellular organisms, on the other hand, usually reproduce sexually. A female egg is united with a male sperm during fertilization. The new organism that grows from this union has half of the father's genes and half of the mother's.
