Immaculate Conception: Virgin Shark Gives Birth to Twins

JeanneSager — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:25:00 GMT

It's a miracle! Well, sort of. A female white spotted bamboo shark who hasn't been near a male in six years is now the proud mom of the Belle Isle Aquarium's two newest additions.

So what's the catch? There is none. The curator of fishes at the Detroit aquarium told National Geographic he'd heard of a bonnethead shark that supposedly had a "virgin birth" in Nebraska last year, so when the bamboo shark laid a cluth of eggs in April, he decided to leave them in the tank with her. Usually the eggs are assumed to be infertile and discarded.

Eventually moved to another tank, the eggs hatched 15 weeks after they'd been laid - without ever being touched by a male shark or any other form of intervention. The birth has scientists pondering the possibilities that the bamboo shark may be hermaphroditic or perhaps has been storing sperm from a male for the past six years (although the latter has been largely discounted). Genetic testing will have to be done before any real determination can be made, and that will take some time. In the meantime, the aquarium will not be discarding future clutches of eggs laid by its female sharks.

Sharks have been getting a bad rap since the '70s when Roy Scheider made us all fear the water, but I'm starting to warm to these cold-blooded creatures. Imagine, you don't even have to tell him you have a headache . . . and you still get a baby!

Image: Shark Foundation, egg of a white-spotted shark

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My Anaconda Don't Want None And Neither Do I

makeitadouble — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:15:00 GMT

In light of the recent and tragic tiger attack at the San Francisco zoo that claimed the life of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and seriously wounded two other young men I am aghast at how the birth of 14 baby anacondas at the New England Aquarium in Boston on News Year’s Day is being treated as a light-hearted slow news day cutesy-wootsy human interest story and not the inevitable threat to zoologists, cage cleaners, zoo patrons and most importantly our children that it really is.

On January 1 at 5 a.m. Ashley, the aquarium’s 16-foot anaconda gave girth to 14 baby anaconda’s each measuring about 2 feet in length and each possessing the same innate ability to kill their prey by coiling their large, powerful bodies around their victims and squeezing until the victim suffocates or is crushed to death. Scott Dowd, the aquarium's Amazon biologist and researcher, said "We knew that the due date was just about now. The big thing that we're all getting a kick out of is that my wife was due right around this time." The father of the snakes is the only male anaconda in the exhibit. The father of Scott Dowd’s child is not the only male anaconda in the exhibit.

Lest you think that I’m writing this to be controversial or just to use the word “lest” in a post, remember this: zoos and aquariums are merely minimum security prisons for mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and arthropods with the sole purpose of exploiting these animals for the entertainment of humans. And what do human prisoners do besides collect rocks in the yard to be polished into chess pieces, lift weights, and make garbage bags of Pruno, a prison wine created from fruit, sugar and ketchup? They try to escape.

So, why would animal prisoners be any different? The problem is that when a human prisoner escapes he stops by Fox Studios to pick up his paycheck, steals a car then immediately goes to his shorty’s crib where the police are waiting to break in their new stun guns. When wild animals escape the zoo they don’t take the Metro-North Railroad to Connecticut, they attack and sometimes kill people.

On a rainy day during a vacation on Cape Cod a couple years back we reluctantly took our son to something called a Zoo-quarium. While he was feeding a handful of dried corn to one of the sheep, it bit his finger. Let me say that again – THE SHEEP TRIED TO EAT MY SON. For a year after that he would randomly blurt out, “White sheep bit my finger.” and we had to change the channel if a commercial for Serta Mattresses came on. What if it wasn’t a sheep he was feeding grain to though? What if it was a crocodile or a sting ray?

I say we follow the model established by DreamWorks Animation with their film Madagascar and put all the animals in captivity (this includes you too Petting Zoos, Carnivals and Siegfried and Roy) in wooden crates, load them on cargo ships and send them back to their natural environments; starting with these anacondas.

Does anyone have Sir Mix-A-Lot’s home address?

Strollerderby : aquarium

Immaculate Conception: Virgin Shark Gives Birth to Twins

My Anaconda Don't Want None And Neither Do I