Nature & Environment

Aquarium mystery as stingray may have been impregnated by a shark

By T.K. Randall
February 14, 2024 ·  13 comments

The stingray undergoing an ultrasound. Image Credit: Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO / Facebook Something fishy is afoot at the Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville, North Carolina - a female stingray has seemingly become pregnant despite having no contact with a male of the species.

The mystery became apparent after Team ECCO, which runs the aquarium, conducted ultrasound scans and discovered that the stingray - named Charlotte - was expecting.

There have been cases where some types of stingray can store sperm for later use, but in this particular instance there were never any males of the species in the tank with her.

So who or what could be responsible ?

As it happens, there is one male animal in the tank - a shark.So could we soon see the world's first shark-stingray hybrid ? (A sharkray ? A stingshark ?)

"I'm going to stop this misinfo in its tracks," said Dr Noah Bressman, assistant professor of physiology at Salisbury University. "Sharks [and] rays are as distantly related as humans [and] snakes, so a snake knocking up a human is just as likely as a shark knocking up a ray."

If that's true, though, how did the stingray end up pregnant ?

One possibility is parthenogenesis (or 'virgin birth') - a very rare phenomenon in which a ray can produce an embryo without fertilization.

It makes more sense than a shark being responsible, but it would still be very unusual.

We'll likely have to wait until the stingray gives birth before we'll get a definitive answer to the mystery.

Source: IFL Science | Comments (13)

Tags: Stingray