MOSCOW, May 11: Are men an already endangered species? A bizarre question, it may feel. But, with the male fertility falling yearly at an alarming two per cent on the one side, and new medical techniques like parthenogenesis which can help develop ova into offspring without fertilisation, the males are likely to face a catastrophe.

The shocking revelation, brought out by a pair of Russian biologists on the basis of an in-depth study, has appeared in Russia, the journal published by Ria-Novosti, a Russian news agency.

Its recent issue says that the number of infertility case for which the male will be responsible can, by the middle of next century, go as high as 50 to 60 per cent, and that sperm in average male has halved over the past 50 years.

Worse, there is little hope of improvement in the situation, say Russian Science Academy biologists Ksenia Yegorova and Vigen Geodakian who carried out the study.

Telling a different story from the current ``clone'' sensation, scientists point out the ongoing efforts to materialise parthenogenesis. A new method, still to concretely evolve out in the laboratory, involves placing the ovum in special solution, where it reproduces its exact replica, and does not need any male chromosome's presence at any stage.

According to the biological data, one in five or six families in Russia have difficulties in conceiving, and more than one million married couples cannot have children.

Almost two-and-a-half million Russian women have an abortion every year despite availability of a variety of contraceptives and family planning techniques.

The gloomy picture notwithstanding, scientists feel that human beings are innovative creatures and they really enjoy the situation when they succeed in coming out of troubles posed by mother Nature.

Still, when it seems that women could conceive without the participation of males, who even otherwise face problem with their own fertility power, biologists ask themselves a baffling question: ``Are we entering the era of matriarchy again?''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.