I love pregnant stingray Charlotte who is doing it all herself

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Charlotte the Stingray, who may or may not be a single mother, who works two jobs, who loves her children and never stops.

Mysteriously pregnant stingray Charlotte may already be my favorite animal of 2024. Charlotte’s handlers at the North Carolina Aquarium recently revealed that she was nursing multiple pups, despite her only company being a pair of male sharks. Although there was initial speculation that some interspecies mixing was to blame here, Charlotte’s pregnancy is almost certainly the result of a known but rare phenomenon called parthenogenesis, which is a form of asexual reproduction.

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Charlotte the Round Stingray (Eurolophus tells) has been a longtime resident of the Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO in Hendersonville. Sometime last September, Charlotte began to feel “swollen” and the aquarium initially feared the worst, as multiple “growths” were found inside her. Ultimately, however, the team veterinarian confirmed that she was indeed pregnant with quadrupeds (the term for stingray young). Fish house announced Charlotte’s pregnancy in early February.

However, what is strange is that Charlotte has not had any male stingray boyfriends recently. Last July, the aquarium transferred a pair of one-year-old white-spotted bamboo male sharks to Charlotte’s tank. And later, staff noticed bite marks on Charlotte, which could be a sign of shark mating. So the aquarium already considered whether it was possible for Charlotte to successfully breed with sharks.

Sharks and stingrays are part of the same broad group of fish, but outside experts have strongly rejected this theory. Perhaps the most memorable debunking came from Damien Chapman, senior scientist and director of the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium’s Shark Research Center, who told Forbes: “I’d give a shark the same chances of becoming a father as I would give Elvis or Bigfoot—zero.”

Instead, Charlotte’s bundle of joy appears to be an example of parthenogenesis, which is still not an earthly phenomenon. This can happen when an unfertilized egg cell fuses with a polar body (a cell that arises when the egg cell matures that usually has no function) and divides like a typical embryo and Begins to develop, even if there is no genetic material from the father. Parthenogenesis has been observed with other sharks and stingrays, but this appears to be the first case recorded in the round stingray.

Those still hoping to see Sharkray will have to wait a little longer. As of Wednesday this week, Charlotte is pregnant, oblivious to the enthusiastic attention her miracle story has garnered on social media. But it is expected that she will give birth to a child any day now.

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