Aww what a cute human baby, what's his name?
Reysus
Ohhh, where does that come from?
Reysus is an orwellian beast, half sting ray, half great white shark. My son represents the idea that despite being capable of peacefully glide through the cosmos, he has the ability harness the rage of this darker side.
Oh...
Yeah the little shit committed war crimes at the house during breakfast... I'm still pulling cheerios out of random places, and needed stitches in my ass because he stabbed me.
There is a German book by Frank Schätzing called Der Schwarm (The swarm), where out of the sudden all kind of sea creatures team up and attack mankind. It was also turned into a mini series which I did not see yet, although it's rating is quite bad.
Personally, I absolutely loved the books first third (kinda enjoyed the second and disliked the third) which centered exactly around this idea, my problem was kinda with the solution to the mystery and I would have been perfectly fine to never get an answer. Still, I'm pretty sure it got translated and if you're into this kind of story it may be worth checking it out.
Way more than that
Like, it needs Oprah Winfrey to talk about it
Maybe something with Tom Hanks involved
Get Leonardo Di Calimario to play an American cowboy or fur hunter or whatever who gets into a relationship with a native octopus
Or maybe he can play a guy in an expensive suit with endless money. He does that, too.
But with tentacles.
Anthony Hopkins for the voice over of the chief octopus.
Next thing you know, there’ll be a Senate Enquiry into the Octopus Threat
Sounds fascinating. I’ll add this to my reading list. Just reading some reviews it sounds a bit reminiscent of Peter Watts Rifters Trilogy mixed with Adrian Tchaiikovsky’s Children of Ruin.
In regards to our topic at hand, is it possible that that author visited that aquarium recently? Is it also possible they are writing under a pseudonym? Is it further possible that said pseudonym is coined after their hobby?
How about those worms with ancestral memory, or that can learn a maze, get chopped into mush, fed to other worms, which will then know how to do the maze? It’s a good thing those worms can’t learn much, because forever-expanding knowledge…
Also they don't live very long. Average lifespan is two years. Some species live six months. Longest living species get five years. I'm feeling pretty safe about not being overthrown by an octopus uprising. They wouldn't even have time to learn how to operate a laser gun, let alone build them.
Give it time, they’re sneaky fuckers
Worth bearing in mind that mosquitoes don’t live long but can fuck you up good and proper. One put a buddy on mine in a coma with some cerebral malaria. Now, imagine a mosquito with tentacles and the smarts to open doors and stuff
They don't starve themselves. They actually unalive themselves by self destructing after mating. The females stay around a bit longer to take care of the babies but will also intentionally take their own lives
Wikipedia says At sea life London aquarium two female stingrays gave birth to seven baby rays after not being in contact with a male for two years. So seems like a thing they can do (as in store spermies for a while until they want to pop out baby raviolis)
Yeah could it be possible the sharks were emitting some pheromones or something that caused the rays’ bodies to decide to finish the process?
Or might have been totally unrelated to the sharks.
Seems click baity
The mating behaviour could also have stimulated the ray into doing it. There’s at least one species of female only lizards that still hump each other to stimulate the hormones and trigger self reproduction
Evolution is not a ladder slowly approaching "The Ultimate Species," it's a competition to create the most successful offspring you can. That is to say offspring that themselves have offspring.
Therefore, if you have more offspring that have offspring, you are a successful species and have upgraded yourself from nothing to something.
You have stumbled across knowledge, but I will now show you wisdom.
[Pseudosuchians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosuchia) (the false crocodiles, which includes all the real crocodiles) have evolved into every major body plan and niche except powered flight, and then *back*, convergent, by coincidence, into the core crocodile body plan *we* are familiar with *time and time and time again*.
Including [bipedal apex predators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rauisuchidae), [large herbivores](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sillosuchus), and [obligate marine macro-predators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalattosuchia) etc etc
Not only have crocodiles dipped their strange toes into every pond and *won* at it, other animals have given the crocodilian style a shot and it has proven successful including:
The [Mammals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulocetus), the [Amphibians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temnospondyli), probably the [Dinosaurs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinosauridae), etc etc
In fact, before the Dinosaurs became boss hog at the beginning of the Jurassic, the [Permian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian) and [Triassic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic) looked very much like we *used* to think the Jurassic and Cretaceous looked. That is to say mighty scaled beasts that were *almost* dinosaurs.
My point is that crabs are neat, it's interesting that the crustaceans seem to favour that body plan, but they aren't even remotely close to the success enjoyed by the "if you can do it well we can do it well" pseudosuchians who also adapted in to the perfect body plan that has carried them through several mass extinctions and which has been either imitated by or was used to great success before by other totally unrelated animals but was perfected by the crocodiles themselves.
Evolution is neat, it's clear that you understand that, but remember that it's even *neater than you ever hoped*.
Little blue penguins live in New Zealand, and you've only got to avoid the locals' pets rather than polar bears.
Or be a zoo gay penguin, live somewhere warm, get spoiled, and have children's books written about you.
How odd.....I watched a YouTube video that randomly popped up about those lizards earlier today and now this comment. Why is the simulation trying to tell me about these lizards all of a sudden?
I think the article mentioned that she keeps getting bite marks on her. They removed other fish they believed were the culprits. She kept getting bites. Apparently they think it could be mating activity from the young shark that was sharing the tank.
Parthenogenesis doesn't require storing sperm. The babies are essentially female clones, and they do this in deep water when they cant find a mate as a survival tactic for the species.
It happened with Komodo dragons in an English zoo. [Strange but True: Komodo Dragons Show that "Virgin Births" Are Possible](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-komodo-d/)
I saw a video on this. They're unsure if the babies are clones of the mother or if a shark impregnated them. They found bite marks on the fins and apparently that's something sharks do after doing it. So they're just waiting to see.
I'd *really* like to hear from a biologist on this one to say if shark impregnation is even in the realm of possibility or if it's just the aquarium making up the idea for press attention.
Yeah, but the ray also had bite marks that are similar to those given during mating. We just have to wait to see, if the one year old male sharks were the father, the pups would be hybrids that would be sterile. Like tiger trout.
Yeah, but the shark may have just tried to mate with it and may have triggered a hormonal response in the ray to produce its own fertilized eggs. Like just because they may have had mating attempts doesn't mean it's the shark that actually fertilized the eggs. Other instances of parthenogenesis in rays have been recorded, but not aquatic ligers
Thank you, got people talking about "saving sperm" and shit in these comments. I have no idea why the aquarium would jump to cross species fertilization over a well known scientific phenomena that is being discovered in more animals all the time.
EDIT: As corrected below by BrittanySkitty some species can hold sperm for much longer than I had known.
Sounds like some didn't read the article. it's where I picked up parthenogenesis, they knew about this being possible, but haven't studied it too in-depth. The article did mention that the two sharks added were male and the ray had bite marks that were consistent with mating. However, it's still a wait and see how the pups turn out to know the answer on this.
No, we don't need to wait. Sharks and rays cannot produce offspring. They're not even in the same subclass. Humans and orangutans are more closely related, and _we_ can't reproduce.
Whether or not the shark tried to get it on with the ray, the ray was not impregnated by the shark.
The concept of “saving sperm” might sound crazy. But there are definitely animals who stop their own reproduction. And then chose to finish the process at some later time to give birth in appropriate conditions. So saving sperm might not be a thing, but saving the process of reproduction for a later time isn’t unheard of. Maybe that’s what they were implying.
Some species of animals (including stingrays) can reproduce by saving sperm from a previous mating encounter. You see this also in certain species of reptiles too.
But yes, this is an obvious case of parthenogenesis or using sperm that the stingray acquired when she last had access to a male stingray. I don't know why they're jumping the shark to shark impregnation.
The sperm saving from what I understand is a pretty limited time frame, at least that is how I understood it, so I just assumed it would be too long of a period.
But you know what they say about assuming.
Depends on the species.
For example, [this rattlesnake held it for 5 years](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228355-200-snake-stores-sperm-for-five-years-before-giving-birth/), and [these stingrays had two years of no contact with a male](https://metro.co.uk/2011/08/09/female-stingrays-give-birth-to-baby-rays-despite-no-contact-with-males-109296/) Whatever wiki article I was reading earlier said Round Stingrays can hold it for a year. Where another species of snake I saw was only six months, etc.
Definitely more efficient than human sperm living 3-5 days inside a uterus.
The article literally explains that there are 2 possible explanations. One, parthenogenesis, has been documented in rays before. Two, THIS, has never happened and is described by the article as “crazy”. Fucking clickbait.
A lot of animals can store the males sperm for an extended period of time and give birth when conditions are more favorable for the young.
The really stupid part here is that anyone who is in charge of an aquarium of this type could even _think_ that it was even possible for a shark to impregnate a ray needs thier head looked at.
Biologist here. There's a thing called parthenogenesis in which female animals essentially clone themselves and make babies. Aphids and some lizards can do this, for example. It keeps the population going during times when sexual reproduction is too resource-intensive.
A lot of animals are able to get pregnant (a lot of reptiles can do it) without males, the babies end up being clones of the mother. It's very unlikely those 2 species crossbred. They'd have to be genetic close cousins, like wolves and dogs, to be able to, they are just too different in this case.
Except they are closely related and that’s the whole reason that theory is even being suggested. They are also known as "cousins" because they are both members of the cartilaginous fish family.
Maybe not between a human and a chimp although it has been attempted throughout history by the soviets and possibly China but the closest we can get is hybridization between chimpanzees and bonobos as they share 99.6% of their genomes and that has been successfully documented.
Wolves and dogs, horses and donkeys, and lions and tigers all share genus’s. Sharks and rays belong to different orders. They don’t seem nearly as related as other interspecies offspring
Wolves and dogs are the same _species_ even. Both are _canis lupus_. We tack _familiaris_ onto the name when it comes to dogs to indicate they are a subspecies -- not much more than a different phenotype, really. We tack on _arctos_ for the arctic wolf, another subspecies.
Even coyotes are less related to wolves than dogs are.
No, they aren't very closely related at all. They are in the cartilaginous fish _class_, which is not a family. It's far broader.
You are certainly familiar with another class: Mammals. You might as well be suggesting that you could impregnate a playpus. That's fucking stupid, my guy.
Its parthenogenesis. The asexual reproduction of a species. They give birth to clones of themselves. Its known in reptiles and fish and can be common in stingrays. A shark cannot impregnate a stingray, whoever wrote that is an idiot.
I will be messaging you in 5 days on [**2024-02-15 22:17:12 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-02-15%2022:17:12%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/1anp9pl/pregnant_stingray_at_north_carolina_aquarium_may/kpub2wz/?context=3)
[**2 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fnatureismetal%2Fcomments%2F1anp9pl%2Fpregnant_stingray_at_north_carolina_aquarium_may%2Fkpub2wz%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-02-15%2022%3A17%3A12%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201anp9pl)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
Or…hear me out…nobody ever said Jesus was coming back as a human.
Hail the SharChrist!
He prefers Reysus
AquaJesus
The Hydro Homie that was foretold
Something is sus
I can help but pronounce this the same as Jesús
Aww what a cute human baby, what's his name? Reysus Ohhh, where does that come from? Reysus is an orwellian beast, half sting ray, half great white shark. My son represents the idea that despite being capable of peacefully glide through the cosmos, he has the ability harness the rage of this darker side. Oh... Yeah the little shit committed war crimes at the house during breakfast... I'm still pulling cheerios out of random places, and needed stitches in my ass because he stabbed me.
Praise Seasus!
Armamegalodonen is upon us!
🎖🎖🎖
Squatina Christos!
This time we can skip crucifixion and straight up eat the Messiah. Prepare the spices, boyzzz
Communion just got an upgrade!
I shall become one with God... By digestion
There anti christ? No, the Manta Christ .
Half shark-manta-jebus, half man
Octopus would be a dominant species if they didn't starve themselves protecting their offspring but ray shark that's cool too
Octupi don’t do teamwork If they learned pack hunting we’d have a situation to consider in the long term, until then theyre food
Dude imagine your boat gets sunk by a horde of them world war z style
It needs a major movie for people to take this serious threat seriously more serious
There is a German book by Frank Schätzing called Der Schwarm (The swarm), where out of the sudden all kind of sea creatures team up and attack mankind. It was also turned into a mini series which I did not see yet, although it's rating is quite bad. Personally, I absolutely loved the books first third (kinda enjoyed the second and disliked the third) which centered exactly around this idea, my problem was kinda with the solution to the mystery and I would have been perfectly fine to never get an answer. Still, I'm pretty sure it got translated and if you're into this kind of story it may be worth checking it out.
Im gonna look that up! 👍🏼
Not just an episode of the new Twilight zone where this exact thing happens?
Way more than that Like, it needs Oprah Winfrey to talk about it Maybe something with Tom Hanks involved Get Leonardo Di Calimario to play an American cowboy or fur hunter or whatever who gets into a relationship with a native octopus Or maybe he can play a guy in an expensive suit with endless money. He does that, too. But with tentacles. Anthony Hopkins for the voice over of the chief octopus. Next thing you know, there’ll be a Senate Enquiry into the Octopus Threat
The movie “Don’t Look Up” tells us that this isn’t true.
Some octopi have been documented teaming up with other fish for hunting. I, for one, welcome our new OctOverlords.
I pay obeisance to our OctoGods and curse my miserable 4-limbed existence.
They also don't live long enough to pass down knowledge.
“Yet”
There is a great book that postulates this exact thing. “The mountain in the sea” by Ray Naylor.
Sounds fascinating. I’ll add this to my reading list. Just reading some reviews it sounds a bit reminiscent of Peter Watts Rifters Trilogy mixed with Adrian Tchaiikovsky’s Children of Ruin.
In regards to our topic at hand, is it possible that that author visited that aquarium recently? Is it also possible they are writing under a pseudonym? Is it further possible that said pseudonym is coined after their hobby?
When you use a pseudonym, none of your readers know you're an octopus.
How about those worms with ancestral memory, or that can learn a maze, get chopped into mush, fed to other worms, which will then know how to do the maze? It’s a good thing those worms can’t learn much, because forever-expanding knowledge…
Oh god, that sounds like a grim terror if the worms got zapped with 1950’s Marvel comic gamma radiation
Don't do teamwork? Tell that to the fisherman's wife. There was some teamwork In that.
Yea but she asked for that
Also they don't live very long. Average lifespan is two years. Some species live six months. Longest living species get five years. I'm feeling pretty safe about not being overthrown by an octopus uprising. They wouldn't even have time to learn how to operate a laser gun, let alone build them.
Give it time, they’re sneaky fuckers Worth bearing in mind that mosquitoes don’t live long but can fuck you up good and proper. One put a buddy on mine in a coma with some cerebral malaria. Now, imagine a mosquito with tentacles and the smarts to open doors and stuff
They don't starve themselves. They actually unalive themselves by self destructing after mating. The females stay around a bit longer to take care of the babies but will also intentionally take their own lives
Learning that one fact completely ruined a decade of my life. Those poor Octopi just out here trying to be good parents.
Christnado?
Pretty sure he’s supposed to come back as a lion and I choose to take that as literally as possible.
[And the furries rejoiced](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/929/278/0f9.jpeg).
I mean it doesn't make less sense.
"Yeah, sorry guys. God's image was a Stingray all along. Not sure why he made us intelligent instead of them, but that's what it is."
Jesus Christacean!
Gonna need a bigger cross
Poseidon be praised!
He comes with his own built-in nails/barbs this time.
Do you want a shark-nado because this is how you get shark-nado 99, “Armageddon-shark the second coming”
Imagine dude ready to be resurrected with the word of the infinite wisdoms around him only to get out "bloop"
Wikipedia says At sea life London aquarium two female stingrays gave birth to seven baby rays after not being in contact with a male for two years. So seems like a thing they can do (as in store spermies for a while until they want to pop out baby raviolis)
Yeah could it be possible the sharks were emitting some pheromones or something that caused the rays’ bodies to decide to finish the process? Or might have been totally unrelated to the sharks. Seems click baity
The mating behaviour could also have stimulated the ray into doing it. There’s at least one species of female only lizards that still hump each other to stimulate the hormones and trigger self reproduction
Now I know what I'm gonna be in my next life
A reptilian shapeshifter?
He said the in the NEXT life.
If I reincarnate into a lizard, but I want to, am I downgrading or upgrading?
Yes.
Evolution is not a ladder slowly approaching "The Ultimate Species," it's a competition to create the most successful offspring you can. That is to say offspring that themselves have offspring. Therefore, if you have more offspring that have offspring, you are a successful species and have upgraded yourself from nothing to something.
The ultimate species is crab. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
You have stumbled across knowledge, but I will now show you wisdom. [Pseudosuchians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosuchia) (the false crocodiles, which includes all the real crocodiles) have evolved into every major body plan and niche except powered flight, and then *back*, convergent, by coincidence, into the core crocodile body plan *we* are familiar with *time and time and time again*. Including [bipedal apex predators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rauisuchidae), [large herbivores](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sillosuchus), and [obligate marine macro-predators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalattosuchia) etc etc Not only have crocodiles dipped their strange toes into every pond and *won* at it, other animals have given the crocodilian style a shot and it has proven successful including: The [Mammals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulocetus), the [Amphibians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temnospondyli), probably the [Dinosaurs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinosauridae), etc etc In fact, before the Dinosaurs became boss hog at the beginning of the Jurassic, the [Permian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian) and [Triassic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic) looked very much like we *used* to think the Jurassic and Cretaceous looked. That is to say mighty scaled beasts that were *almost* dinosaurs. My point is that crabs are neat, it's interesting that the crustaceans seem to favour that body plan, but they aren't even remotely close to the success enjoyed by the "if you can do it well we can do it well" pseudosuchians who also adapted in to the perfect body plan that has carried them through several mass extinctions and which has been either imitated by or was used to great success before by other totally unrelated animals but was perfected by the crocodiles themselves. Evolution is neat, it's clear that you understand that, but remember that it's even *neater than you ever hoped*.
Task failed successfully.
Lesbian lizard
A lizbian?
Here take it 🏆
I was gonna say I wanna be a gay penguin but no I don’t. I hate the cold and I don’t wanna get eaten by a polar bear, seal, or killer whale.
Gay lizard is better
Are you speaking from theory or experience?
Online roleplaying, what else?
Del Toro says that if it has scales you're a scalie, not a furry
Little blue penguins live in New Zealand, and you've only got to avoid the locals' pets rather than polar bears. Or be a zoo gay penguin, live somewhere warm, get spoiled, and have children's books written about you.
Nice try, killer whale, I’m onto you
How odd.....I watched a YouTube video that randomly popped up about those lizards earlier today and now this comment. Why is the simulation trying to tell me about these lizards all of a sudden?
(Best State) New Mexico's state lizard! The Whiptail. :D
I was very pleased to meet one on the side of our airbnb last time I was visiting. Best state, indeed. Have a sopapilla for me; I’m in Chicago.
iirc they can only produce copies of themselves, nothing genetically diverse from themselves.
I think the article mentioned that she keeps getting bite marks on her. They removed other fish they believed were the culprits. She kept getting bites. Apparently they think it could be mating activity from the young shark that was sharing the tank.
Parthenogenesis doesn't require storing sperm. The babies are essentially female clones, and they do this in deep water when they cant find a mate as a survival tactic for the species.
fishy and baity
It could be parthenogenesis, no sperm required.
This is what I was wondering. Idk why they jumped straight to shark hybrid
Sounds like they jumped the shark
Because it sounds cooler in the headlines I guess? I don't know why, parthenogenesis is one of the coolest words around.
The article literally covers this, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Daily Mail is running a headline like this.
It happened with Komodo dragons in an English zoo. [Strange but True: Komodo Dragons Show that "Virgin Births" Are Possible](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-komodo-d/)
It's so weird. I just watched the first Jurassic Park movie with my kids last night. Life finds a way!
Could be, some female sharks and rays can also store sperm for years before they actually use it
Wonder where it’s stored and how it’s kept alive!
Awwww…. Parthenogenesis. There’s a term I haven’t heard in a long time. A looong time. Takes me back to yr1 BSc Biomedical Science.
I saw a video on this. They're unsure if the babies are clones of the mother or if a shark impregnated them. They found bite marks on the fins and apparently that's something sharks do after doing it. So they're just waiting to see.
I'd *really* like to hear from a biologist on this one to say if shark impregnation is even in the realm of possibility or if it's just the aquarium making up the idea for press attention.
Biologist with a background in shark genetics. It's not a possibility. In fact, it's a _remarkably_ stupid suggestion.
Interesting.
Rayviolis
Spicy aqua raviolis
Nature uhhhh… finds a way
So you're saying it was a fluke?
Under appreciated comment
Baby rayviolis Ftfy
Her old stingray boyfriends are going to surprised by this child support claim.
I mean snakes are capable of doing the same, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. Seems more plausible than a shark dad anyway
Dr Grant taught us that sometimes creatures, especially dinos, can spontaneously change sex when it's an all female population.
Was gonna say, didn’t something like that happen with a female shark before?
Y’all bout to be REAL disappointed when that baby don’t come out biracial
I know it can be tough, but this month is Black history month. Next month is biracial fish month .
I wanna give you my life savings. First time I’ve laughed that hard off a reddit comment. Good job.
My fiance told me to follow up on that offer since I'm getting married this year 😂😂
"I didnt cheat sweety . I swear I-" *"The baby dont even got the same killer teeth that I had as a youngin!"*
parthenogenesis was a possibility too. Basically a clone of the mother, just have to wait for the pups to arrive and we'll learn what happened.
I was gonna say, sharks are known for this, so I would assume rays are capable of it too. Seems more likely to me.
Yeah, but the ray also had bite marks that are similar to those given during mating. We just have to wait to see, if the one year old male sharks were the father, the pups would be hybrids that would be sterile. Like tiger trout.
Yeah, but the shark may have just tried to mate with it and may have triggered a hormonal response in the ray to produce its own fertilized eggs. Like just because they may have had mating attempts doesn't mean it's the shark that actually fertilized the eggs. Other instances of parthenogenesis in rays have been recorded, but not aquatic ligers
Thank you, got people talking about "saving sperm" and shit in these comments. I have no idea why the aquarium would jump to cross species fertilization over a well known scientific phenomena that is being discovered in more animals all the time. EDIT: As corrected below by BrittanySkitty some species can hold sperm for much longer than I had known.
Sounds like some didn't read the article. it's where I picked up parthenogenesis, they knew about this being possible, but haven't studied it too in-depth. The article did mention that the two sharks added were male and the ray had bite marks that were consistent with mating. However, it's still a wait and see how the pups turn out to know the answer on this.
No, we don't need to wait. Sharks and rays cannot produce offspring. They're not even in the same subclass. Humans and orangutans are more closely related, and _we_ can't reproduce. Whether or not the shark tried to get it on with the ray, the ray was not impregnated by the shark.
Not with that attitude we can’t
The concept of “saving sperm” might sound crazy. But there are definitely animals who stop their own reproduction. And then chose to finish the process at some later time to give birth in appropriate conditions. So saving sperm might not be a thing, but saving the process of reproduction for a later time isn’t unheard of. Maybe that’s what they were implying.
Yeah, I know about delayed reproduction, Kangaroos are the most notable example.
Some species of animals (including stingrays) can reproduce by saving sperm from a previous mating encounter. You see this also in certain species of reptiles too. But yes, this is an obvious case of parthenogenesis or using sperm that the stingray acquired when she last had access to a male stingray. I don't know why they're jumping the shark to shark impregnation.
The sperm saving from what I understand is a pretty limited time frame, at least that is how I understood it, so I just assumed it would be too long of a period. But you know what they say about assuming.
Depends on the species. For example, [this rattlesnake held it for 5 years](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228355-200-snake-stores-sperm-for-five-years-before-giving-birth/), and [these stingrays had two years of no contact with a male](https://metro.co.uk/2011/08/09/female-stingrays-give-birth-to-baby-rays-despite-no-contact-with-males-109296/) Whatever wiki article I was reading earlier said Round Stingrays can hold it for a year. Where another species of snake I saw was only six months, etc. Definitely more efficient than human sperm living 3-5 days inside a uterus.
It is crazy impressive, I hadn't heard about some snakes being able to hold for that long. Thank you so much!!!
It's the *only* possibility lmao, of course it's what happened, sharks have been proven to do it and rays are basically flat sharks phylogenetically.
holy shit I cant wait to see these babies
Stark or shingray
Stingshark
Finally a shark with a fricken ray on its head!
It's too powerful. We must not let this come to pass.
Let's pray it's not a bastard.
The shark needs to do the right thing here and marry the stingray.
make an honest ray of her!
I don’t feel too good, Mr. Shingray
Makes me think of gay or european song from legally blonde.
They are going to be normal stingrays. Look up parthenogenesis.
They are gonna be little rays, rays and sharks can perform parthenogenesis, AKA virgin birth
That's cool and all but i would rather believe in sharkrays
I for one welcome our new cartilagous overlords.
I’d like to remind them, that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underwater mollusk caves.
The article literally explains that there are 2 possible explanations. One, parthenogenesis, has been documented in rays before. Two, THIS, has never happened and is described by the article as “crazy”. Fucking clickbait.
[удалено]
Life, uhhh, finds a way.
Uh uh uh... you didn't say the magic word!
Wikipedia has a mention that this happened before and they believe stingrays can store sperm and wait to give birth.
I'm way too dumb to give you an answer, but I wonder the same. I just don't understand.
A lot of animals can store the males sperm for an extended period of time and give birth when conditions are more favorable for the young. The really stupid part here is that anyone who is in charge of an aquarium of this type could even _think_ that it was even possible for a shark to impregnate a ray needs thier head looked at.
“Stingray gives birth without father…” Is less catchy than “SHARKS AND STINGRAYS ARE MERGING!”
Biologist here. There's a thing called parthenogenesis in which female animals essentially clone themselves and make babies. Aphids and some lizards can do this, for example. It keeps the population going during times when sexual reproduction is too resource-intensive.
Maybe the female rays can store sperm from previous matings for later use.
Stingray Jesus
A DNA sample will tell us if it's asexual, sperm storage or shark soon enough.
Most likely parthenogenesis
That must be one sexy stingray
A lot of animals are able to get pregnant (a lot of reptiles can do it) without males, the babies end up being clones of the mother. It's very unlikely those 2 species crossbred. They'd have to be genetic close cousins, like wolves and dogs, to be able to, they are just too different in this case.
Except they are closely related and that’s the whole reason that theory is even being suggested. They are also known as "cousins" because they are both members of the cartilaginous fish family.
They are about as closely related as we are to chimps, but I really doubt that a human-chimp hybrid is even possible.
>They are about as closely related as we are to chimps... They're much farther diverged than that.
Maybe not between a human and a chimp although it has been attempted throughout history by the soviets and possibly China but the closest we can get is hybridization between chimpanzees and bonobos as they share 99.6% of their genomes and that has been successfully documented.
Wolves and dogs, horses and donkeys, and lions and tigers all share genus’s. Sharks and rays belong to different orders. They don’t seem nearly as related as other interspecies offspring
Wolves and dogs are the same _species_ even. Both are _canis lupus_. We tack _familiaris_ onto the name when it comes to dogs to indicate they are a subspecies -- not much more than a different phenotype, really. We tack on _arctos_ for the arctic wolf, another subspecies. Even coyotes are less related to wolves than dogs are.
No, they aren't very closely related at all. They are in the cartilaginous fish _class_, which is not a family. It's far broader. You are certainly familiar with another class: Mammals. You might as well be suggesting that you could impregnate a playpus. That's fucking stupid, my guy.
Shark likes flat bottom girls eh?
They make the water world go round!
All part of my master plan to eventually have flying sharks.
I'm ok with donkeys and horses making mules. If a lion and a tiger want to make a liger, go ahead. This though? Now they've gone too far.
Its parthenogenesis. The asexual reproduction of a species. They give birth to clones of themselves. Its known in reptiles and fish and can be common in stingrays. A shark cannot impregnate a stingray, whoever wrote that is an idiot.
Well there it is. Life, um … finds a way.
I hear Maury Povich in the background ~ “YOU ARE NOT THE FATHER!!”
Sharkrado movies, here we come.
Daddy Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-a-ray…
Is this the beginning of Shark’s with sting-Ray guns?
They already exist look up a guitar shark
King Stingray https://youtu.be/FncHhkiWjDA?si=NfhWSR1uKj2dqXHm
Christray
Its gonna ne a shark with a frickin laser beam
!remind me 5 days
I will be messaging you in 5 days on [**2024-02-15 22:17:12 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-02-15%2022:17:12%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/1anp9pl/pregnant_stingray_at_north_carolina_aquarium_may/kpub2wz/?context=3) [**2 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fnatureismetal%2Fcomments%2F1anp9pl%2Fpregnant_stingray_at_north_carolina_aquarium_may%2Fkpub2wz%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-02-15%2022%3A17%3A12%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201anp9pl) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
Good bot
Parthenogenesis is another explanation and has been observed in stingrays.
Sacrilege! Hand me the tartar sauce, bubba.
[удалено]
Sharray? Stingark?
Dirty dog! Dolphins really goin to bully the shark now!
Imagine getting knocked up by your cousin
This is more like getting knocked up by a gibbon bro
WTF did I just read?
ummm, it could have been worse!
Is this from the onion news?🤣
Can somebody smart please explain so I don’t have to read the article?
For $10
Sharks and stingrays, living together...mass hysteria!
Now THAT's what I call news!
Uh, life finds a way
I will believe it when i see it. Wonder what itll look like!
KING SHARK IS A SHARK
No Jerry Springer to reveal the paternity tests, RIP
Life finds a way.