Kinsley Boyett, assistant director of the Aquarium, said there were bite marks on Charlotte's body that could have been left by a shark. Photo: Aquarium and Shark Lab by the ECCO Team
Stuck in a small town aquarium thousands of miles from her natural habitat, a stingray named Charlotte has lived an adventurous life.
Stay fish nonetheless The rust-colored fish is at the center of a “once-in-a-lifetime mystery,” at least according to the staff looking after her at the Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
< p>Despite not meeting a male of the same species in the last eight years, Charlotte is expected to give birth to babies in the next two weeks.
Charlotte may be the first stingray proven to reproduce asexually, a process known as parthenogenesis has previously been observed in other sharks, rays and rays, but aquarium staff have come up with an alternative theory.
They claim that the clue may lie in the strange marks on her body — bites from the white-spotted bamboo shark with which she shares an aquarium.
April Smith, the aquarium's director, said: «We started to see bite marks on Charlotte, but saw that another fish was biting her, so we moved the fish, but the bite continued.»
«Then our light bulb went off — sharks bite to mate. Have any of our young males mated with her?
Experts have poured cold water on the idea of interspecies romance.
Professor Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Bristol, said a stingray-shark relationship would be the equivalent of a human mating with a shark. camel — but did not rule out this theory completely.
Charlotte the ray shares a tank with a white-spotted bamboo shark after moving other fish. Photo: Aquarium and Shark Lab, ECCO Team
“It’s probably the least likely option,” he said. “They shared a common ancestor almost half a billion years ago, which is a very long time ago in evolutionary terms.
«We are more recently related to camels than sharks are to stingrays.»
Charlotte may have retained sperm from a previous encounter with a man, Professor Simpson added, although he said it was more likely she reproduced asexually.
“This is my bet,” he said. “If I had £100, I'd bet £70 on it. I could put a flutter on a stingray shark for £5 just for fun.»
«The beauty of this story is that we can find the answer — it's not a perpetual mystery in terms of what's going on,» he added.
Ultrasound shows Charlotte is pregnant with at least two puppies
Dr. Cady Lyons, a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, is also skeptical of claims that Charlotte will give birth to a shark-ray hybrid.< /p>
“We need to be clear that there is no shark ray shenanigans going on here,” she said, arguing that the creatures are simply not anatomically the same.
Dr Lyons believes Charlotte reproduced through parthenogenesis, telling the Associated Press: “I'm not surprised because nature has a way of doing it.”
She continued: “We don't know why this happens. It's just a really neat phenomenon that they seem to be able to do.»
«I'm glad the round ray is getting the media attention it deserves — it's not necessarily as sexy as a white shark.» .
Aquarium staff initially feared that Charlotte had developed cancer. when they noticed a lump on her back, but a subsequent ultrasound showed she was pregnant with at least two puppies.
Announcing the news Tuesday, Brenda Raymer, who works at the aquarium, said, «Here's our girl saying, 'Hey, happy Valentine's Day!' Let's get some puppies.»
The stingray lives in a 2,200-gallon tank, but staff hope to move her to a habitat about twice that size to accommodate her offspring when they arrive in the coming weeks.
Along with the zebra shark and other fish, pigeons, Komodo dragons and California condors have been recorded to reproduce through “immaculate conception.”
Once Charlotte's puppies are born, genomic testing will be able to establish whether they were conceived through sperm storage or parthenogenesis, Professor Simpson said.
This It would be obvious if Charlotte gave birth to a shark-ray hybrid, he said, adding: «It's hard to imagine what that would even look like.»
Ring rays are common along the Pacific coast of southern California and Mexico, often resting on sandy bottoms ocean close to the coastline.
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