₦airaland Forum

An 11-year-old reticulated python named Thelma produced six female offspring in June 2012 at the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky, where she lives with another female python, Louise. No male had ever slithered anywhere near the 200-pound (91-kilogram), 20-foot-long (6 meters) mother snake.

New DNA evidence, published in July in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, revealed that Thelma is the sole parent, said Bill McMahan, the zoo's curator of ectotherms, or cold-blooded animals.

Fatherless reproduction in animals that normally require two parents is called parthenogenesis.

This phenomenon occurs when polar bodies, or cells produced with an animal's egg that normally die or disappear, behave like sperm and fuse with the egg.

Optimal Conditions

The number of species known to be capable of virgin births—pythons, boas, birds, sharks, and more—has grown significantly in recent years, noted study leader Warren Booth, a biologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. (See "'Virgin Birth' Record Broken by Hotel Shark."

For instance, until now, scientists had never witnessed the phenomenon in reticulated pythons.

"Pythons are an old, ancient species. We've seen this in more advanced species like garter snakes," said Booth, adding that the discovery helps scientists learn more about the snakes' evolutionary family tree.

It's still a mystery as to why parthenogenesis happens, though Booth hypothesizes that geographic isolation from males and captivity may have a lot to do with it.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141023-virgin-birth-pythons-snakes-animals-science/

CAPSLOCKED:
MAYBE SHE GOT PREGNANT WITH THE SNAKE OF GOD. YOU KNOW.. ANOTHER HOLY SPIRIT STUNT.

Bwahahahaha!

CAPSLOCKED:
MAYBE SHE GOT PREGNANT WITH THE SNAKE OF GOD. YOU KNOW.. ANOTHER HOLY SPIRIT STUNT.

The unquestionable God