- An aquatic center in North Carolina has a pregnant female stingray
- However, there were no male stingrays in her tank
- Staff believe the stingray, Charlotte, may have been impregnated by a male shark that was placed in her tank in July
A stingray at a North Carolina aquarium is expecting babies and the staff thinks it may have been impregnated by a shark.
Charlotte the stingray at an aquarium and shark lab in Hendersonville was due to give birth any day now, but the pregnancy came as a shock to everyone because there were no male stingrays in her tank.
Team ECCO’s Aquarium and Shark Lab noticed swelling in Charlotte in September and thought it could be cancer.
After performing ultrasounds on the stingray, the team realized she was pregnant with multiple pups.
‘We’ve been doing ultrasounds on our beam, Charlotte, since September, when she started swelling. We documented multiple ‘growths’ internally and initially thought she had cancer,” employee Ramer said on February 1.
A stingray at a North Carolina aquarium is expecting babies and staff thinks it may have been impregnated by a shark
Charlotte the stingray at an aquarium and shark lab in Hendersonville was due to give birth any day now – but the pregnancy came as a shock to everyone because there were no male stingrays in her tank
Team ECCO’s Aquarium and Shark Lab noticed swelling in Charlotte in September and thought it could be cancer. After performing ultrasounds on the stingray, the team realized she was pregnant with multiple pups
There are two possible explanations for the mysterious impregnation. The first is a process known as ‘parthenogenesis’.
This is when the eggs develop on their own, without fertilization, and form a clone of the mother.
‘I contacted Dr. Rob Jones, the aquarium veterinarian, and he identified the growths as eggs,” Ramer said. ‘We don’t have a male ray. He said there have been few cases of parthenogenesis in rays.’
The other explanation for Charlotte’s pregnancy is insane.
Staff believe the female stingray may have been impregnated by one of the male yearling sharks they placed in her tank in mid-July.
‘In mid-July 2023 we moved two 1-year-old white spot bamboo males (sharks) to that aquarium. There was nothing we could find definitively about their maturity rate, so we didn’t think there would be a problem,” Ramer said.
“We started noticing bite marks on Charlotte, but saw other fish snapping at her, so we moved fish, but the biting continued.”
Bite marks are an indicator of mating in sharks, as the large fish are known to bite during the mating process, another employee explained – adding that Charlotte had several bites on her fin edges.
Charlotte is pregnant with four puppies and was expected to give birth around February 9, although the birth has not yet taken place today (February 10).
DNA testing will be done on the pups once they are born and aquarium staff will be able to determine if they are mixed breed or clones of their mother.
The gestation period of a stingray is usually three to four months.
The creatures are flattened fish, closely related to sharks. They all belong to a group of fish called Elasmobranchs.
There are two possible explanations for the mysterious impregnation. The first is a process known as ‘parthenogenesis’. This is when the eggs develop on their own, without fertilization, and form a clone of the mother
The other explanation for Charlotte’s pregnancy is insane. Staff believe the female stingray may have been impregnated by one of the male yearling sharks they placed in her tank in mid-July
Stingrays are unique in that they have no bones in their bodies; their skeleton consists instead of flexible cartilage.
They are ovoviviparous, meaning the pups are hatched from eggs retained within the body.
Many stingrays like to live on their own and only come together for breeding and migratory purposes.