A FEMALE stingray is mysteriously pregnant – there’s a reason for it.
Charlotte, who lives in a tank at a North Carolina aquarium, is carrying three to four pups in a “once-in-a-lifetime science mystery” because she reportedly hasn’t shared a tank with a male ray in at least eight years, according to the Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO.
Kady Lyons, a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium, told the Associated Press that a shark-ray hybrid, what some people are speculating Charlotte is carrying, isn’t biologically possible.
“I’m not surprised, because nature finds a way of having this happen,” she said. “We should set the record straight that there aren’t some shark-ray shenanigans happening here.
Charlotte reproduced all on her own through a process called Parthenogenesis — how so-called “partho babies” are born — is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which an embryo can grow from an unfertilized egg.
“We don’t know why it happens,” Lyons added. “Just that it’s kind of this really neat phenomenon that they seem to be able to do.”
Read our stingray pregnancy blog for the latest updates on Charlotte…