Charlotte the stingray took the world by surprise when a North Carolina aquarium announced her immaculate conception in early February.
Now, the Shark Lab and Aquarium in Hendersonville has released an ultrasound video of her pups wagging their tails inside her uterus and confirmed it will release more information tomorrow.
The team had previously said they did not have a specific due date for the virgin stingray because immaculate conception has never been observed in the animals before, but said she is pregnant with up to four calves and is expected to give birth soon.
Charlotte ray expected to give birth any day now
The team at the Aquarium & Shark Lab in Hendersonville showed an ultrasound of the pups wagging their tails inside Charlotte’s uterus.
The aquarium’s uncertainty about when Charlotte will give birth is due to the team’s inability to know exactly when she conceived, particularly because ultrasounds for stingrays are usually performed in late pregnancies.
The cause of her pregnancy was also a mystery because there were no male rays in the aquarium with her, but experts said it was most likely attributed to parthenogenesis, the scientific term for virgin birth.
When this happens, the stingray develops an embryo cloned from itself, which can occur when the mammal has been isolated for a long period of time.
The Aquarium & Shark Lab suggested that Charlotte could have been pregnant by a shark, but experts said that is impossible.
Stingray experts say Charlotte’s “miraculous birth” is likely due to parthenogenesis, a scientific term for virgin birth.
“They can become pregnant without being observed mating with a male in two ways,” Dr. Christopher Lowe, professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Laboratory at California State University, told Dailymail.com last week.
The first is that “many species of sharks and rays can store sperm for at least a year,” but Lowe said that’s unlikely because Charlotte has been alone for too long.
“It turns out that parthenogenesis is more common in sharks and rays than we previously thought, so this is the most likely explanation,” Lowe said.
Depending on water temperature, the average gestation period for a stingray is three to four months.
Certain animals are capable of reproducing through “facultative parthenogenesis,” in which the egg is fertilized with cells from the mother rather than by a male.
Researchers say Charlotte’s ultrasound shows she is pregnant with up to four puppies
Mercedes Burns, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Maryland, told Dailymail.com that because Charlotte’s pregnancy appears to have proceeded normally, she expects the stingray to give birth in about another month.
“What’s interesting about Charlotte is that it represents the first time parthenogenesis has been documented for its species, making it the 15th species to have parthenogenesis documented in an elasmobranch,” said Kevin Feldheim, a researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago and an expert. in parthenogenesis. he told Dailymail.com.
Elasmobranchs include a variety of species of cartilaginous fish (mammals that have five to seven gill slits), including sharks, rays, skates, and sawfishes.
Shortly after the aquarium announced Charlotte’s pregnancy, it speculated that she may have become pregnant by a white-spotted bamboo shark that supposedly lived in the tank with her, something experts have said is impossible.
“The longer some species are kept in captivity, the more we learn about rarities like this,” Feldheim said.
‘But there is no way the ray could have been fertilized by a shark. “That is simply not possible.”
Experts have only studied parthenogenesis in sharks and rays for just under two decades, and although both are elasmobranchs, said Warren Booth, associate professor of entomology at Virginia Tech. NPR that “it is very unlikely.”
He added: “I think they are so genetically distant that that is not considered possible.”
However, he added that the puppies could have problems at birth if they were conceived through parthenogenesis.
“Parthenogenesis has a tendency to produce offspring that are not very healthy,” Booth told the outlet.
«In all the studies carried out with snakes, birds and sharks, the babies do not survive long. They are stillborn or die within a short time.’
Lowe said “a rapid DNA test will confirm whether the female produces viable offspring.”
NPR reported that Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History will conduct a DNA test on Charlotte and her pups once they are born to conclusively show how the stingray became pregnant.