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Bamboo Shark 'Virgin Birth' Set To Happen In United Kingdom

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Feb 15, 2016 02:17 AM EST

Now this is an extremely strange and rare phenomenon---unless you want to call it a miracle.

One female shark that has never had contact with male sharks for the past two years will soon have a couple of babies, the Daily Mail.

This white spotted bamboo at Great Yarmouth Sea Life Center since 2013 after it was removed from a flooded sister center in Hunstanton hasn't been near a male at this center. In fact, she was the only member of her species here.

Yet, she has produced two fertile eggs set to hatch in nine months.

"They will be the first such births in the Sea Life network and we're excited and privileged to be expecting such a miraculous event," said Darren Gook, a marine biologist and shark expert.

This will be the first kind of this birth in the U.K.----with babies getting conceived and born without the involvement of a male parent.

Still, hold on. This phenomenon has been observed in sharks so far. In fact, a second-generation virgin birth of the same bamboo shark species was announced in Germany just a few days ago.

"The process is called 'parthenogenesis' and has long been known to occur in domestic chickens and some reptiles, but was not recorded in sharks until 2008," Gook said. "Females somehow manage to add an extra set of chromosomes to their eggs to produce offspring which are either clones or half-clones of themselves."

"It's been recorded in bonnethead, blacktip, and zebra sharks as well as white spotted bamboos," he added. "It was assumed offspring born this way were infertile and it was an evolutionary dead end, but events in Germany have now disproved that."

An interesting advantage of such an asexual reproduction is the survival of the species even if there is a huge decrease in numbers that make it tough for males to find females---or the other way round.

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