Charlotte the mysteriously pregnant stingray might already be my favorite animal of 2024. Charlotte, a keeper at a North Carolina aquarium, recently revealed that she was pregnant with several pups, even though her only male companions were a pair of sharks. While there was early speculation that it was the result of some cross-species mixing, Charlotte’s pregnancy was almost certainly the result of a known but rare phenomenon known as parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction. form.
Round Stingray Charlotte (Tailed bat status) is a long-time resident of the ECCO team’s aquarium and shark lab in Hendersonville. Sometime last September, Charlotte began to “swell” and the aquarium initially feared the worst after multiple “growths” were discovered inside her body. But eventually, the team’s veterinarian confirmed that she was actually pregnant with up to four pups (the term for stingray pups).aquarium Announce Charlotte got pregnant in early February.
Strangely, however, Charlotte has had no recent male stingray suitors. Last July, the aquarium did move a pair of year-old white-spotted bamboo sharks into a tank in Charlotte. Later, employees did notice bite marks on Charlotte’s body, which could be signs of shark mating. So the aquarium has long considered the possibility of Charlotte successfully breeding with sharks.
Sharks and stingrays belong to the same large family of fish, but outside experts have strongly dismissed this theory.Perhaps the most memorable revelation came from Demian Chapman, senior scientist and director of the Shark Research Center at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium. Tell Forbes: “I think the odds of a shark being a father are the same as the odds of Elvis or Bigfoot being a father — zero.”
Instead, Charlotte’s joy appears to be an example of parthenogenesis, which is still not an ordinary thing. This occurs when an unfertilized egg cell fuses with a polar body (a cell produced when the egg cell matures and is usually nonfunctional) and begins to divide and develop like a typical embryo, albeit without the genetic material from the father. Parthenogenesis has been found in other sharks and stingrays, but this appears to be the first documented case in a round stingray.
Those who still hold out hope of seeing a shark ray will have to wait a little longer. As of Wednesday, Charlotte was still pregnant and had not noticed that her miracle story was abuzz on social media. But she is expected to give birth any day now.