Mateless Shark Gives Birth By Parthenogenesis

[Reefcherie]

I thought you shark fans might find this one interesting!

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/...ve_birth/8878/

[Ranzan]

same thing happened a while ago in seattle aquarium.. Really wierd they should do more research into that kind of thing

[welsher7]

This kind of thing has happened before. female sharks have the ability to hold eggs and sperm until the conditions are right. The longest time I think is around 7yrs.

[Ranzan]

the one in seattle they had in a tank by it self before it was sexualy mature there were no male sharks in the tank

[welsher7]

do you have a link or something about this

[mhltcob]

Originally posted by welsher7
This kind of thing has happened before. female sharks have the ability to hold eggs and sperm until the conditions are right. The longest time I think is around 7yrs.

Parthenogenesis is different than a shark just holding sperm. There is no male contribution in the creation of this offspring. It was proven to be the case through genetic testing. This process has been shown to take place in arthropods and teleosts but not shown to occur in elasmobranchs until rescently.

[AMD30]

and it happend in one of the most ghetto tough highschools in my city! lol i had no idea they even had a marine bio class! iwent to private school and we had nothing that cool for science! lol

[soco1999]

So if there was no male sperm supplied, do the mother and the baby have the same DNA? Is the baby a clone of the mother?

[billsreef]

Yup. That's how they determine it's parthenogenisis vs. long stored sperm

[welsher7]

so the pup would have to be female then too right? thats crazy stuff.

[DaMonkey]

I read about this as well - that's crazy. Quite fascinating scientifically at least!

[shrinky]

Probably not much research data on this since it's so rare, but I wonder how the offspring usually fair? I wonder if they are subject to negative mutuations or genetic problems? Are they truly a 'clone'?