Aquarium baffled after stingray mysteriously gets pregnant despite there not being any males in their tanks
Who’s your daddy?
Researchers in North Carolina say something’s fishy about the pregnancy of a stingray at the Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO in Hendersonville.
The stingray, named Charlotte, is preggers, but the aquarium and outreach center doesn’t have any male stingrays, WRAL in Raleigh reported.
Despondent staffers thought the swelling they started to see in September might be cancer before exams revealed the surprising cause, the dispatch said.
There are two ways Charlotte might have gotten knocked up, but puzzled researchers won’t know which way until the pups are born, the outlet reported.
One is a very rare process called parthenogenesis, in which the eggs develop on their own without fertilization and create a clone of the mother.
The other possibility?
Charlotte could have been makin’ whoopee with one of the young studly sharks that was added to the tank in mid-July, the aquarium said.
“In mid-July 2023, we moved two 1-year-old white spot bamboo males [sharks] into that tank. There was nothing we could find definitively about their maturation rate, so we did not think there would be an issue,” Brenda Ramer, the aquarium’s founder and executive director said, adding, “We started to notice bite marks on Charlotte, but saw other fish nipping at her, so we moved fish, but the biting continued.”
Ramer said bite marks are an indicator of mating for sharks — and the frisky stingray had several bites on her fin edges.
Ramer said the expectant mom is carrying up to four pups and could deliver at any time, WRAL reported.
DNA testing will likely be conducted on the pups after birth to solve the miraculous mystery.
Until then, it’s Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
Ramer said updates on her pregnancy progress will be posted to Team ECCO’s website and Facebook page.
The typical gestation period in a stingray is three-to-four months, the aquarium said.
