And a virgin shall be with pup, and shall bring forth a hammerhead, and they shall call his name Elasmobranch which being interpreted is, to beat the gill...
Three female hammerheads in a tank in Nebraska and no males in site for three years. Poof! A pup is born. Realizing that the important part is really the first discovery of asexual reproduction in sharks, I cannot get over the idea that these poor females are stuck in Nebraska and getting no sex.
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AP is reporting:
Female sharks can fertilize their own eggs and give birth without sperm from males, according to a new study of the asexual reproduction of a hammerhead in a U.S. zoo.
The joint Northern Ireland-U.S. research, being published Wednesday in the Royal Society's peer-reviewed Biology…
Nuestra Tiberone de la Conception, Hammerhead shark, Sphyrna zygaena
A female hammerhead shark gave birth to a pup in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska in 2001 despite having no contact with a male shark. Thanks to new DNA profiling technology, scientists have been able to show conclusively that the…
Forget about the season; virgin births can happen any time of year... and anywhere.
So there is an Ask a Scienceblogger question about virgin births. In zoology this is called "parthenogenesis" (which means "virgin birth"), and in botany it is either called "vegetative reproduction" (think:…
In a really astounding discovery, it was confirmed that a 2001 birth by a female Hammerhead shark was achieved in the complete absence of males, in a process called parthenogenesis. While at first it was believed that the female shark mated before being captured, and stored the sperm for three…
When did Queens move to Dublin?
And how many of us here had this quote below in their head?
Henry Wu: You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will... breed?
Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.
Tsk, tsk, you are assuming they are all heterosexual sharks. If they can do parthenogenesis, maybe they can do other stuff for each other. Or for themselves, who knows? Did their keepers give them any shark toys?
I can't believe I just wrote this. Shark toys.
You got me there. LOL. Do shark toys look like the claspers on a male?