When you buy through links on our website , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
A femalewater snakein Missouri can do something that no human charwoman can ( no matter how badly she might want to ): She can have babies without any aid from a male .
Earlier this month , a yellow - bellied water snake at the Missouri Department of Conservation ’s ( MDC ) Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center give way birth to a litter ofbaby snakeseven though she has n’t had " relations " with a manly snake in at least eight years .
This yellow-bellied water snake at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center in Missouri may have given birth without help from a male via a reproductive process known as parthenogenesis.
It ’s the 2nd yr in a row that this snake has had a so - call " virgin birth , " but the remarkable mama ’s birthing pattern are not as miraculous as they may seem . chicken - bellied water snakes are one of many species of reptilian that can regurgitate through a process known as parthenogenesis , MDC herpetologist Jeff Brigglersaid in a program line . [ Animal Sex : 7 Tales of Naughty playact in the Wild ]
This uncanny method acting of facts of life works differently in different species , according to Briggler , who explained that , in general , parthenogenesis is a type ofasexual reproduction"in which the issue ( babies ) are produced by females without genetic part of a male . "
Several snake species are known to reproduce this way , include timber rattlesnakes , copperheads , Agkistrodon piscivorus , Burmese Python , common boas , green anacondas and orchestra pit vipers . Parthenogenesis is also common in the insect earth — bees , wasps and stick insects all on occasion regurgitate this way . Andsome species of fish , amphibians and birds also are capable of making babies through parthenogeny ( Sorry , mammalian , but you ca n’t do it this way ) .
These egg membranes were found in the female water snake’s cage after her “virgin” birth.
Why do so many distaff beast resort to this eccentric of copulation - free reproduction ? The understanding is somewhat straight : they ca n’t observe a desirable male person to regurgitate with , harmonize to Warren Booth , an evolutionary and universe geneticist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh .
Booth and his confrere , Gordon Schuett , an evolutionary life scientist and herpetologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta , have studied snake parthenogenesis for many years and have found that female snakes may resort to nonsexual reproductive memory as a way to conserve their finite supplying of egg . In other lyric , if they ca n’t come up somebody unspoiled enough to fertilize their eggs for them , female ophidian take matters into their own " hands , " rather than allow their bollock to go to barren , Boothtold Live Science in 2011 .
How precisely do the distaff snakes fertilize their own eggs ? That seems to depend on the office . In some cases , female may actually store spermatozoon from male they felt with before reaching sexual due date . Then , when they are matured enough to multiply , they apply this sperm to fertilize their own egg , according to Booth and Schuett .
But using old spermatozoon to make a child is not the same thing as parthenogenesis , in which no paternal genetic material is used . For this asexual summons to fall out , female snakes carry out meiosis , or the normal division of cells that usually results in the formation of four egg - primogenitor cells , one of which becomes the egg .
Normally , the female ’s body resorb the other three nut - primogenitor cells , but in parthenogeny , one of those distaff cells behaves like sperm , fertilise the ball . The result is an fertilized egg that only contains genetic material from the female parent .
It is n’t clear yet how the yellow - bellied pee snake in the grass at MDC reproduced without assist from any male . It may be possible that she hive away sperm for eight years , using it to fertilize her own eggs , but if that ’s the slip , she ’ll have set a new record . The long a Snake River has been known to store spermatozoan is five year , according to Booth and Schuett .
MDC is now team up up with Booth to seek to chance out how the mama snake in the grass reproduced , accord to Sara Turner , site handler at MDC ’s Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center , who told Live Science that nature plaza faculty lately sent scale clippings from the babe Hydra born this calendar month ( none of which survived ) to Booth . The geneticist will analyze the DNA of the sister snakes to determine if they have deoxyribonucleic acid from both a manly and female snake , or if the female snake did all the heavy lifting herself .
