Stingray's shock pregnancy after living in a tank WITHOUT males – but the bomb theory could reveal a mysterious parent

A North Carolina aquarium is rocked by a mysterious pregnancy after a stingray ended up in an aquarium without males.

Charlotte de stingray, who should give birth could have reproduced on its own every day, or with the help of a very unlikely mate.

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Team Ecco staff from the Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville noticed that Charlotte was starting to swell in September and was concerned that she might have cancer.

However, ultrasound scans showed that the stingray was indeed pregnant with several puppies.

One possible conclusion is parthenogenesis – a process by which some animals can reproduce themselves.

The eggs can develop independently without fertilization and form a clone of the mother.

“I contacted Dr. Rob Jones, the aquarium veterinarian, and he identified the growths as eggs,” said staff member Ramer.

“We don't have a male ray. He said there have been few cases of parthenogenesis in rays.”

Dr. April Smith, director of the North Carolina Science Trail, wrote in one blog post: “This means that the offspring are typically all female, and this occurs in a situation where no males are present (i.e. usually a zoo/aquarium, or perhaps a remote natural environment such as the deep sea).

“It's a survival mechanism that allows the conservation of a species.”

However, aquarium staff think this probably has to do with an even crazier explanation.

They suspect that Charlotte may have mated with one of the one-year-old sharks she shared an aquarium with in mid-July. Mail reports.

“In mid-July 2023, we moved two one-year-old male white spot bamboo (sharks) to that aquarium,” Ramer said.

“We didn't think there would be a problem,” he added.

“We started noticing bite marks on Charlotte, but saw other fish snapping at her, so we moved fish, but the biting continued.”

Sharks are known to bite during the mating process and Charlotte had several nips on her fin edges – leading staff to speculate about the unlikely match.

Stingrays are closely related to sharks, they all belong to the same group of fish called Elasmobranchs.

However, they are genetically so far apart that this situation would be extremely rare.

The stingray carries up to four pups and is expected to give birth any day; the original due date was February 9.

Once the pups are born, DNA testing will take place so that aquarium staff can finally solve the mystery of who the father is and if there is a father at all.

They will be able to tell if they are mixed breed or clones of their mother.

In February 2023, another mysterious solo pregnancy shocked one woman Japanese zoo, which led to a two-year investigation.

Momo the gibbon – who lives alone in a tank – gave birth in 2021, leaving her zookeepers on a a wild goose chase to find out who the father was.

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