‘Virgin’ pregnant stingray Charlotte has ‘rare disease’, says North Carolina aquarium
A stingray whose “virgin” pregnancy made global headlines has a rare reproductive disease, the aquarium housing her has said.
In an update on the health of Charlotte the stingray, the Aquarium and Shark Lab in North Carolina said she had “developed a rare reproductive disease that has negatively impacted her reproductive system”.
Charlotte captured international attention in February when the aquarium said she was carrying “between three and four pups” despite not encountering a male stingray for eight years.
“It’s a really strange and unique phenomenon,” Brenda Ramer, its executive director, said at the time while livestreaming Charlotte’s ultrasound.
In the update posted on social media on Friday, the team said: “Many are asking the name of the reproductive disease, but it is simply found under that text reproductive disease.
“We are actively searching [for] more information ourselves.”
They added they found studies done on a different species of stingray but none on round rays, Charlotte’s species.
The aquarium closed on Saturday as the team “continue to care for Charlotte, and consult her medical team”.
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Before the discovery of the pregnancy, aquarium staff believed Charlotte had cancer after she began to “swell”.
However, they soon discovered she was expecting.
Thousands of people shared their theories on how the pregnancy had happened, with some saying she had been impregnated by a male shark living in the tank. Experts dismissed this, however.
“The morphology of the male shark won’t necessarily fit with the morphology of the female round stingray,” Benjamin Perlman, from the biological sciences department at California State University, Long Beach, told NBC’s Today.
Ms Ramer told Today she now believes Charlotte became pregnant through parthenogenesis, where a female’s egg becomes fertilised by her own cells.
If this was the case, Charlotte would likely only be able to give birth to females as they would be her clones, according to the aquarium.
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‘Not impossible’
In a social media post asking people to stop “discounting” the aquarium’s discovery, Ms Ramer said: “Just because something has not happened or has not been documented does not make it impossible.”
The fish is between 12 and 16 years old and was adopted from a private home outside the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, eight years ago.
Staff at the aquarium realised Charlotte was carrying eggs in December.
“She definitely got much rounder,” Kinsley Boyette, an assistant director of the Aquarium and Shark Lab, told Today.
While humans carry their offspring in their stomachs, stingrays carry theirs in their backs. “We noticed that she couldn’t completely bury herself underneath the sand, and that is what moved us to perform the ultrasound.”
Now, Charlotte’s fans around the world are waiting to get an update on her health after months of speculation.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
A farmer who fell from a greenhouse roof during an anti-immigrant raid at a licensed cannabis facility in California this week has died of his injuries.
Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die as a result of Donald Trump’s Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) raids.
His niece, Yesenia Duran, posted on the fundraising site GoFundMe to say her uncle was his family’s only provider and he had been sending his earnings back to his wife and daughter in Mexico.
The United Food Workers said Mr Alanis had worked on the farm for 10 years.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorise American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” the union said in a recent statement on X.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it executed criminal search warrants at Glass House Farms facilities on Thursday.
Mr Alanis called family to say he was hiding and possibly fleeing agents before he fell around 30ft (9m) from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources.
Agents arrested 200 people suspected of being in the country illegally and identified at least 10 immigrant children on the sites, the DHS said in a statement.
Mr Alanis was not among them, the agency said.
“This man was not in and has not been in CBP (Customs and Border Protection) or ICE custody,” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30ft. CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.”
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Four US citizens were arrested during the incident for allegedly “assaulting or resisting officers”, the DHS said, and authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents.
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In a statement, Glass House, a licensed Cannabis grower, said immigration agents had valid warrants. It said workers were detained and it is helping provide them with legal representation.
“Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,” it added.
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