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Rare Virgin Shark Births Reported in Detroit

Posted by timothy on from the signs-of-the-something-or-other dept.

randomErr writes "Voice of America reported that 'Officials at Detroit's Belle Isle Aquarium say a shark there recently produced three babies in an event they are calling virgin births. The mother, a white spotted bamboo shark has lived at the aquarium without any male counterparts for the past six years.'"

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by chainrust · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looking it up on Google, the only other recorded instance of a virgin shark birth happened in a Omaha zoo.
    I wasn't able to find the species of shark in Detroit, but the one in Omaha was a bonnethead.
    Makes for some very odd news...

    --

    If you don't know what Zoo Blacklisting is, click here.
  2. Too Much Hoopla by jeramybsmith · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Shark reproduction is still pretty much voodoo to the scientific community. Take the white shark, we know zilch about them. Only after we attached some gps units to some white sharks did we discover that they like to take little trips down into the abyss now and then (and we we have no clue why they do it or what they eat while down there).

    All in all, I suspect there is nothing miraculous about reproduction. My guess is either the shark has weird 6 year gestation or that the shark was a builtin survival mechanism where if it does not produce offspring for a long time it essentially clones itself by reproducing from its own sole DNA.

    --
    Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
  3. goes to show by tid242 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    just goes to show that we'd rather catch something in a net, throw it in a tank, and invite people to come look at it - then actually learning about what we're caging. sort of like how we treat minorities, except when the minorities reproduce it's considered a problem rather than a blessing...

    -tid242

    --

    With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan

  4. It does happen by damiangerous · · Score: 4, Interesting

    in some other higher species. Most notably and frequently, in turkeys.