Female Snake Gives Birth Without Male Companion

According to the Washington Post, researchers believe the yellow-bellied water snake is the first of her species to experience “parthenogenesis”, which is basically fancy science speak for immaculate conception. A captive snake in southeast Missouri has reproduced without a male companion.

These watersnakes give start to stay snakes.

Brostoski noted that this watersnake might be reproducing asexually because she hasn’t had a male snake around for a while. Previous year, the same snake also gave birth to babies.

“For a few years, it was believed that such delivery in captivity was because of sperm storage”, Briggler mentioned in a information launch.

The following snake is a water snake and had not been in contact with any male snakes for the past eight years. This year, her offspring didn’t survive, but two that were born last summer did, and they are on display at the nature center, which is about 100 miles south of St. Louis. Known as parthenogenesis, such virgin births don’t require male fertilization for an egg to develop. This summer, an intern at the Missouri conservation center discovered a bunch of membranes in the watersnake’s cage.

The two babies that the water snake gave birth to in 2014 are still alive and healthy, whereas all the offspring she produced in 2015 have died.

According to herpetologist, Jeff Briggler, this is an incredibly rare occurrence even in other kinds of snakes, such as copperheads, cottonmouths and Burmese pythons, and more common among insects, amphibians, fish or reptiles, but not mammals.

The conservation department said there are no other documented cases of parthenogenesis by a yellow-bellied water snake.

“Long-term storage is unusual. When you run into situations like this, you always wonder, ‘Is that a possibility?'” Robert Powell, a biology professor and snake expert at Avila University in Kansas City, told the Associated Press. “Just another sign that nature works in mysterious ways”. Known as parthenogenesis, it occurs in less than 0.1% of all vertebrates. However, none of them have been capable of have the similar capacity as their mom.