Virgin Mary Shark Was Pregnant... ASTONISHED SCIENTISTS!!!!!!!

by **J The Kidd** Sat Oct 11, 2008 12:23 am

A female Atlantic blacktip shark has astonished scientists by producing a baby without a male shark.

DNA testing has confirmed it as the second ever recorded case of the phenomenon.

The shark, called Tidbit, came to the Virginia Aquarium & Marine
Science Centre in Virginia Beach not long after being born in the wild
and lived there for eight years with no males of the same species.

The 5ft shark died after being removed from the tank for a veterinary
examination, and a medical examination revealed Tidbit was carrying a
fully developed shark pup, aquarium curator Beth Firchau said.

Demian Chapman, a shark scientist with the Institute for Ocean
Conservation Science at Stony Brook University in New York state,
performed DNA testing that showed the pup had no father. Virgin birth
such as this is known as parthenogenesis.

A year ago, Chapman used genetic testing to confirm that a hammerhead
shark at a zoo in Omaha gave birth to a pup in 2002, also after
parthenogenesis.

'It tells us that the original case we documented last year was not
some fluke of nature. This is something that might be more common than
we think it is, and widespread among sharks,' Chapman said.

Tidbit's pup would probably have been quickly eaten by 'big sand tiger
sharks' in the tank had it been born. This is what happened to the tiny
hammerhead pup in the Omaha case.

Parthenogenesis has been documented in Komodo dragons, snakes, birds, fish and amphibians, Chapman said.

It occurs when a baby is conceived without male sperm fertilizing the
female's eggs. In the type of parthenogenesis seen in sharks, the
mother's chromosomes split during egg development.

How the sharks do it is unclear. Chapman said they may use a hormone to
trigger eggs to develop in this manner in the absence of males. Or
perhaps if eggs remain unfertilized with no males around, a certain
fraction develop into embryos.

'It's a finding that kind of rewrites the textbooks a little,' Chapman said.

'It just goes to show how the ocean keeps its secrets very well. And the sharks in particular.'

'Of course, sharks are being killed at such a rate that unless we do
something to stop that, we're not even going to learn all their secrets
before they're gone,' Chapman added.

The findings appear in the Journal of Fish Biology.