An 11 - year - old reticulated python named Thelma has given birth to six baby snake without mating with a male . This is the first time a vestal birth has been documented in this specie , Malayopython reticulatus , which holds the world record book for “ longest snake ever ” in captivity .
The 200 - pound , 20 - foot ( 6 - metre ) Southeast Asia native has been housed at theLouisville Zooin Kentucky for four years without a manlike married person . Her vivarium - first mate is another female , Louise . In the summer of 2012 , Thelma lay a clasp of 61 eggs , and she spent two weeks gyrate up and brooding them before zoo stave remove the eggs for exam .
“ It is not uncommon for a snake to lay infertile orchis , so the staff was surprised when the egg appear to be full and healthy alternatively of shrunken and discolored shells , distinctive of unfertile reptilian eggs , ” zoo curator Bill McMahan says in anews release . They artificially hatch some of the clutch .
On September 12 , 2012 , the first of six respectable reticulate python babies hatched . Their average weightiness was 5.23 ounce ( 148.3 gram ) . After the female parent and all six of her offspring terminate a shake off cycle , the shed skin was collect and analyse byUniversity of Tulsa ’s Warren Boothand colleagues . Genetic tests and molecular analyses uncover that all six baby snakes were produced by their mother alone — without any manlike genetic donation . Zoo faculty previously thought that Thelma hold onto sperm from much earlier . " We had assign it to salt away sperm,“McMahan tells National Geographic . " I hazard sometimes Sojourner Truth is unusual than fiction . "
Asexual replication ( forebode parthenogeny ) hap by nature in many worm and worms , and it ’s even the norm for some vertebrates like lounge lizard . Facultative parthenogenesis , on the other hand , is exceedingly rare in the state of nature . That ’s when females who normally reproduce sexually start let babies without males . These sorts of virgin births have previously been document in shark , birds , lounge lizard , and snakes live in zoos and other intent options , but it was observed in the wild for the very first time just a couplet of years ago . Booth ’s squad identify thesefirst font of untamed facultative parthenogenesisin two viper — the copperhead and the cottonmouth — in 2012 .
In Thelma ’s example , cubicle prognosticate diametric consistence ( which contain transmissible material leftover from ball cubicle organisation ) basically accept the position of sperm cell . Normally they just melt , but here they blend with the ball , reinstate the proper amount of chromosome Set and triggering cell division . This process , called final merger automixis , bring forth “ half - knockoff ” of the mother . And it occurred in all know facultative virgin birth snake in the grass cases , with one exception : a captive Burmese python once produced full clone . Thesefindingswere published inBiological Journal of the Linnean Societyearlier this summer .
" It ’s something we used to look at an evolutionary novelty,“Booth order National Geographic , " that ’s much more plebeian than we thought . " Zookeepers mistrust Thelma ’s cushy living conditions touch off the vestal birth . Thelma ’s presently on exhibit in the HerpAquarium , and here ’s footage of her and her babies :
Image : Mariluna viaWikimediaCC BY - SA 3.0
