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A single pregnant stingray hasn’t been around a male ray in 8 years. Now many wonder if a shark is the father.
A stingray named Charlotte is the main character of her own mystery after it was discovered that she’s pregnant – with no male ray in sight. Charlotte, who resides in a tank at a North Carolina aquarium, was found covered in shark bites, an indicator of shark mating, furthering speculation as her caretakers seek to answer the question: Who is the father of Charlotte’s babies?
The Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville, North Carolina, hosted a live video on Facebook last week during which they explained Charlotte’s situation. The round stingray, which is native to Southern California, is believed to be between 12 and 16 years old and was found to be carrying three to four pups.
And while her pregnancy has her caretakers excited, it also left them stunned.
“The unique thing about Charlotte is we do not have a male ray,” Brenda Ramer, founder and executive director of Team ECCO, said in the Facebook video. According to the Associated Press, she hasn’t been in a tank with a male ray in at least eight years.
Ramer offered two possibilities for Charlotte’s mysterious pregnancy – the first of which has given rise to viral commentary. Ramer said that despite there being no other male rays, Charlotte has been living in the same tank as two “very young male sharks,” about a year old, since July. Then they started noticing she was covered in bite marks – a sign of shark mating.
“We didn’t think anything about it until one day we were kind of like, ‘Oh my gosh. Sharks bite when they mate,'” Ramer said. “…There is a potential she mated with one of these young male sharks.”
Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO via Facebook
Those comments quickly went viral, with headline after headline saying Charlotte was impregnated by a shark. But experts say such an event is not possible.
“We should set the record straight that there aren’t some shark-ray shenanigans happening here,” Kady Lyons, a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium, told the Associated Press. Aside from obvious differences like their size, she said their anatomies and DNA wouldn’t lend themselves to procreation.
The alternative source of Charlotte’s pregnancy – and what experts and the aquarium believe to be the true case – is a rare phenomenon known as parthenogenesis.
“Pretty confident that this is parthenogenesis …. and parthenogenesis literally translates into virgin birth or miracle birth,” Ramer told the AP. “… It is very rare to happen.”
In this process, smaller cells separate from the mother’s eggs are created that then merge with the egg to create offspring. According to National Geographic, this creates offspring that are “similar to the mother but not exact clones.” Sharks, which are very closely related scientifically to rays, have been documented as undergoing this process.
Charlotte is due within two weeks, the aquarium said on Monday. And whether the father of Charlotte’s babies is a shark or just nonexistent, “we have very unique juju going on here,” Ramer said.
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Beryl, the second tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, took shape Friday as it barreled its way toward the Caribbean.
Beryl was expected to strengthen into a hurricane as it approached the Windward Islands in the West Indies, the National Hurricane Center reported in its latest advisory late Friday night.
Beryl was centered about 1,110 miles southeast of Barbados, the hurricane center said, with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour and tropical storm-force winds extending 45 miles from its center. It was moving west at 18 mph.
The system was expected to hit the Windward Islands by late Sunday or Monday, and was forecast to bring anything from 3 to 6 inches of rain to the Windward Islands and Barbados. No watches or warnings were yet in place.
NOAA
Last week, Tropical Storm Alberto brought torrential flooding to portions of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. It was responsible for at least four deaths in the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon and Veracruz, according to the Associated Press.
The Atlantic hurricane season began June 1 and lasts through Nov. 30. According to the hurricane center, the season’s first hurricane usually forms in early to mid-August, which would make Beryl unusual if it were to reach hurricane strength. In a report released last month, the NOAA predicted an “above average” hurricane season with 17 to 25 storms, 8 to 13 hurricanes and 4 to 7 major hurricanes of category 3 or higher.
A tropical storm is a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 39 to 73 mph, while a hurricane is defined as a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds greater than 74 mph.
CBS News
Martin Mull, beloved actor known for “Fernwood 2 Night,” “Roseanne” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” dies at 80
Martin Mull, whose droll, esoteric comedy and acting made him a hip sensation in the 1970s and later a beloved guest star on sitcoms including “Roseanne” and “Arrested Development,” has died, his daughter said Friday. He was 80.
Mull’s Daughter, TV writer and comic artist Maggie Mull, said her father died at home on Thursday after “a valiant fight against a long illness.”
Mull, who was also a guitarist and painter, came to national fame with a recurring role on the Norman Lear-created satirical soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and the starring role in its spinoff, “Fernwood 2 Night,” on which he played the host of a satirical talk show.
Mat Hayward/Getty Images for Netflix
“He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials,” Maggie Mull said in an Instagram post. “He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and —the sign of a truly exceptional person— by many, many dogs.”
Melissa Joan Hart, who acted alongside Mull in the series “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” paid tribute to him on Instagram on Friday, calling him “a wonderful man who I am better for knowing.”
“I have such fond memories of working with him and being in awe of his huge body of work,” she wrote.
Known for his blonde hair and well-trimmed mustache, Mull was born in Chicago, raised in Ohio and Connecticut. He studied art in Rhode Island and Rome. He combined his music and comedy in hip Hollywood clubs in the 1970s.
“In 1976 I was a guitar player and sit-down comic appearing at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip when Norman Lear walked in and heard me,” Mull told The Associated Press in 1980. “He cast me as the wife beater on ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.’ Four months later I was spun off on my own show.”
In the 1980s he appeared in films including “Mr. Mom” and “Clue,” and in the 1990s had a recurring role on “Roseanne.”
He would later play private eye Gene Parmesan on “Arrested Development,” and would be nominated for an Emmy in 2016 for a guest turn on “Veep.”
