Joshua Nair
Scientists have uncovered how a single stingray with no males in her tank for eight years managed to fall pregnant.
In September 2023, staff at The Aquarium and Shark Lab in North Carolina stumbled upon an odd occurrence.
Charlotte the stingray was initially thought to have developed cancer after noticing some swelling.
The experts carried out an ultrasound, but shockingly found out that Charlotte was actually now pregnant with four pups. Now, in February 2024, she is not far off her delivery date.
Charlotte is set to be a single mother with no possible fathers in her tank, which raises the question of how on earth she managed to get pregnant in the first place.
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The first wonder was whether one of the male sharks she shared the tank with briefly had managed to impregnate her, but those claims have been ultimately dismissed.
Staff at the aquarium plan to carry out DNA tests on the pups following their birth to see if they carry the genes of a mystery father, but they expect that it will return no new revelations.
Almost like an episode of Maury.
Scientists explained that what happened to Charlotte is rare but not impossible, with the phenomena known as parthenogenesis.
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Known as a form of asexual reproduction, it is when a female of the species can produce an embryo, despite the missing presence of sperm fertilising her eggs.
And this stingray managed it four times.
Some animals experience parthenogenesis more commonly than others, but for most creatures, it is extremely rare - and unlikely.
To quote the one and only Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: "Life, uh, finds a way".
Basically, an egg fuses with a cell in the mother's body, triggering cell division and leads to an embryo, making her children clones of her, essentially.
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Research scientist Kady Lyons told the Daily Mail that Charlotte's pregnancy is the only recorded example she knows of for round stingrays, though parthenogenesis has occurred for other sea creatures.
The expert was quick to quash any suggestion that Charlotte was due to give birth to some shark-stingray hybrid.
She said: "We don't know why it happens. Just that it's kind of this really neat phenomenon that they seem to be able to do.
"We should set the record straight that there aren't some shark-ray shenanigans happening here."
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So we can probably cross that one off the list of possible reasons.