Charlotte the mysteriously pregnant stingray might already be my favourite animal of 2024. Charlotte’s handlers at a North Carolina aquarium not too long ago revealed that she was carrying a number of pups, regardless of her solely male firm being a pair of sharks. Whereas there was early hypothesis of some interspecies mingling being in charge right here, Charlotte’s being pregnant is nearly actually the results of a identified however uncommon phenomenon referred to as parthenogenesis, a type of asexual replica.
Charlotte the spherical stingray (Urolophus halleri) has been a very long time resident of the Aquarium and Shark Lab by Workforce ECCO in Hendersonville. Someday final September, Charlotte started to “swell,” and the aquarium initially feared the worst, having discovered a number of “growths” inside her. Finally, although, the crew’s vet confirmed that she was really pregnant with as much as 4 pups (the time period for stingray younger). The aquarium announced Charlotte’s being pregnant in early February.
The unusual factor, nevertheless, is that Charlotte has had no male stingray suitors as of late. Final July, the aquarium did transfer a pair of one-year-old white-spot bamboo male sharks into Charlotte’s tank. And afterward, workers did discover chunk marks on Charlotte, which is usually a signal of shark mating. So the aquarium contemplated early on whether or not it was potential for Charlotte to have efficiently bred with the sharks.
Sharks and stingrays are a part of the identical broad group of fish, however exterior specialists have strongly shut down this principle. Maybe probably the most memorable debunking comes from Demian Chapman, senior scientist and director of the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium’s middle for shark analysis, who told Forbes: “I give the shark the identical odds of being the daddy that I’d give Elvis or Bigfoot of being the daddy—zero.”
As a substitute, Charlotte’s bundles of pleasure appear to be an instance of parthenogenesis, which isn’t nonetheless an earthly occasion. This may occur when an unfertilized egg cell fuses with a polar physique (a cell produced when an egg cell matures that often has no operate) and begins to divide and develop like a typical embryo, albeit with no genetic materials from a father. Parthenogenesis has been seen with different sharks and stingrays, however this seems to be the primary case ever documented in a spherical stingray.
These nonetheless hoping in opposition to hope to see a sharkray should wait just a little longer. As of Wednesday this week, Charlotte stays pregnant, oblivious to the rapturous social media consideration her miraculous story has garnered. Nevertheless it’s anticipated that she’s going to give start any day now.
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