Holy mother of yellow-bellied water snakes!
A yellow-bellied water snake from Missouri turned celeb overnight when news media discovered she was the first recorded member of her species to experience "virgin birth."
Jordanya Brostoski / Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center
The snake, nicknamed Yellow Belly, has not had contact with a male snake in eight years. But instead of wallowing with Netflix and Chardonnay like some of us might do, Yellow Belly decided she didn't need a man and became pregnant anyway. ??
"I went to clean her enclosure and I noticed something out of the ordinary," Jordi Brostoski, a naturalist at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center, told BuzzFeed News.
"I thought none of the offspring were fully formed or alive or anything, but when I was cleaning out her bedding two little healthy offspring slivered out."
This first conception happened almost exactly a year ago, Brostoski said, and the miracle children are still alive and well.
Yellow Belly gave birth again on Friday, but unfortunately none of the little blessings survived.
Jordanya Brostoski / Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center
Though Brostoski said she experienced a similar situation with an isolated cottonmouth snake at a different zoo, they believe Yellow Belly is the first recorded member of her species to give birth without doing the nasty.
"Not that much is known about parthenogenesis really," Brostoski told BuzzFeed News. "We don't really understand why it occurs or what signals her body to do it, [but] it seems to be adaptive and reproductive survival."
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1NDUOen
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