Latest update on the pregnant NC stingray who shared an aquarium tank with sharks

A pregnant stingray at a North Carolina aquarium has become an overnight celebrity — and many are wondering who the father is.

Charlotte, a round stingray at Aquarium & Shark Lab by team ECCO in Hendersonville, is pregnant with as many as four pups, but she hasn’t shared her tank with any male stingrays in at least eight years, CBS News reported.

She could deliver soon, but as of Thursday afternoon, Charlotte still hadn’t had her pups. But she did get some much-needed rest alongside a horseshoe crab in her tank after meeting a lot of her fans, according to the aquarium’s latest TikTok.

But how did she get pregnant?

Some are saying Charlotte could have been impregnated by one of the five male sharks in her tank.

Charlotte was found engulfed with shark bites, which could signal that she mated with a shark, CBS News reported.

“There might be, like, a shark-stingray baby coming up soon,” said TikTok user @kjadeg, who also suggested that Charlotte could have fertilized her own eggs. “Either way, you get stingray Jesus…or you get shark-ray.”

Would this kind of interspecies pregnancy be possible? Here’s what experts say.

Can a shark impregnate a stingray?

If you were hoping for a shark-stingray hybrid in the near future, you’re out of luck, since it’s impossible for a shark to impregnate a stingray due to their different sizes and DNA, Kady Lyons, a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium, told the Associated Press.

“We should set the record straight that there aren’t some shark-ray shenanigans happening here,” Lyons said.

So, how did Charlotte get pregnant?

Charlotte’s pregnancy is likely the result of parthenogenesis, a rare method of asexual reproduction where a female can produce an embryo without fertilizing an egg with sperm, AP reported.

Cases of parthenogenesis have been recorded in more than 80 other species, including a zebra shark and a python, according to National Geographic.

“For millions of years animals have reproduced via parthenogenesis, which first emerged in some of the smallest, simplest organisms,” National Geographic says. “Most animals that procreate through parthenogenesis are small invertebrates such as bees, wasps, ants, and aphids, which can alternate between sexual and asexual reproduction.”

But this could be the first documented case of it happening with a round stingray, according to Lyons.

“I’m glad the round stingray is getting the media attention that it deserves,” Lyons told AP. “It’s not necessarily as sexy as a white shark, but they do a lot of really neat stuff.”

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