Charlotte, a stingray with no male companion, is pregnant in her mountain aquarium
ABC News
A stingray that has lived for years in a North Carolina aquarium without a male companion is pregnant
Charlotte, a rust-colored stingray the size of a serving platter, has spent much of her life gliding around the confines of a storefront aquarium in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains.
She's 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) from her natural habitat under the waves off southern California. And she hasn't shared a tank of water with a male of her species in at least eight years.
And yet nature has found a way, the aquarium's owner said: The stingray is pregnant with as many as four pups and could give birth in the next two weeks.
"Here’s our girl saying, ’Hey, Happy Valentine’s Day! Let's have some pups!” said Brenda Ramer, executive director of the Aquarium and Shark Lab on Main Street in downtown Hendersonville.
An expert on the stingrays said it would have been impossible for Charlotte to have mated with one of the five small sharks that share her tank, despite news reports suggesting that was the case after Ramer joked about a possible interspecies hookup.
