For the second year in a row, the Washington Post reports, a watersnake in Missouri gave birth without having had any contact with any male snakes (for the last eight years). (Nice.)
Researchers at the Missouri Department of Conservation believe that this snake may be the first of her species to experience “virgin births.” Parthenogenesis—a kind of asexual reproduction in which females give birth without any male genetic contribution—is more commonly seen in insects. “It doesn’t happen in snakes all that often,” naturalist Jordi Brostoski said.
“She’s at that age where she’s completely able to reproduce... It seems like a reproductive survival technique,” Brostoski said. “Without a male, she wants to go ahead and produce offspring. That’s what she’s driven to do.”
These watersnakes give birth to live snakes. This summer, an intern at the Missouri conservation center discovered a bunch of membranes in the watersnake’s cage.
“I thought, ‘what joker put tomatoes in here for the snake’,” intern Kyle Morton said in a release.
Hah! That would be a good joke.
The two babies the watersnake gave birth to last year are still alive and healthy, the Post reports. None of this year’s babies have survived.
Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.