An aquarium in North Carolina has announced they are looking into the mysterious pregnancy of its female stingray.
Last week, the Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team Ecco, located in Hendersonville, made a Facebook post revealing that its stingray Charlotte is pregnant.
The pregnancy has been deemed “a once-in-a-lifetime science mystery”, by the aquarium, as they revealed at the time the female was impregnated there were no male stingrays in the tank with her.
The post, alongside two photos of Charlotte and the babies, said: “Our stingray, Charlotte, is expecting! We have held this close to our hearts for over 3 months. We have ultrasound images confirmed by two supporters: Dr. Robert Jones, the Aquarium Zvet out of Australia, and Becka Campbell, PhD candidate at Arizona State Univ.
“The really amazing thing is we have no male ray! We do have a couple of possible reasons For this event.”
In a statement to ABC 13 News , the aquarium said there are two ways in which Charlotte could have become pregnant. One is a rare process called parthenogenesis, in which the eggs develop on their own without fertilisation and create a clone of the mother.