A new ultrasound of Charlotte the ‘virgin stingray’ shows her pups alive and well in the womb – and she’s due to give birth ANY DAY

Charlotte the stingray took the world by storm when a North Carolina aquarium announced her immaculate conception in early February.

Now the Aquarium & Shark Lab in Hendersonville has released an ultrasound video of her pups moving their tails in her womb and confirmed that more information will be released tomorrow.

The team has previously said they do 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 pups and is expected to give birth soon.

The team at the Aquarium & Shark Lab in Hendersonville showed an ultrasound of the pups moving their tails in Charlotte’s womb

The aquarium’s uncertainty about when Charlotte will give birth stems from the team’s inability to know exactly when she became pregnant, especially since ultrasounds for stingrays are usually performed during late pregnancies.

The cause of her pregnancy was also a mystery as there were no male stingrays in the tank with her, but experts said it was most likely attributed to parthenogenesis – the scientific term for virgin birth.

When this happens, the stingray develops a cloned embryo of itself, which can happen if the mammal has been in isolation for a long time.

The Aquarium & Shark Lab suggested Charlotte could have been impregnated by a shark, but experts said that’s impossible

Stingray experts say Charlotte’s ‘miracle birth’ is most likely due to parthenogenesis – a scientific term for virgin birth

“They can get pregnant in two ways without seeing them mate with a male,” Dr. Christopher Lowe, professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab 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 this is 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 the water temperature, the average stingray’s gestation period is about three to four months.

Certain animals can reproduce through ‘facultative parthenogenesis’, where the egg is fertilized with cells from the mother rather than by a male.

Researchers say Charlotte’s ultrasound shows she is carrying four puppies

Mercedes Burns, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Maryland, told Dailymail.com that Charlotte’s pregnancy appears to have progressed normally and that she expects the stingray to give birth in about a month.

“The interesting thing about Charlotte is that she marks the first time parthenogenesis has been documented for her species, making it the 15th species to have parthenogenesis documented in an elasmobranch,” Kevin Feldheim, a researcher at Chicago’s Field Museum and an expert in the field of parthenogenesis. told Dailymail.com.

Elasmobranch includes a variety of cartilaginous fish species – mammals with between five and seven gill slits – including sharks, rays, skates and sawfish.

Shortly after the aquarium announced Charlotte’s pregnancy, there was speculation that she could have been impregnated by a white-spotted bamboo shark that reportedly lived with her in the aquarium, something experts say is impossible.

“The more and longer some species are kept in captivity, the more we learn about these kinds of quirks,” Feldheim said.

‘But it cannot be that the ray has been impregnated by a shark. That’s just not possible.’

Experts have studied parthenogenesis in sharks and stingrays for only a little less than two decades, and although both are elasmobranchs, Warren Booth, associate professor of entomology at Virginia Tech, told me NPR that ‘it is very unlikely.’

He added: ‘I think they’re so genetically distant that that’s not thought possible.’

However, he added that the puppies could have problems at birth if they were conceived through parthenogenesis.

“Parthenogenesis tends to produce offspring that are not very healthy,” Booth told the outlet.

‘In all studies on snakes, birds and sharks, the offspring do not survive long. They are stillborn or die within a short time.’

Lowe said: ‘A rapid DNA test will confirm whether the female is producing viable young.’

NPR reported that the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago will conduct a DNA test on Charlotte and her pups once they are born, to definitively show how the stingray became pregnant.