Considered a male for many years, the reptile was in reality a female who, however, has not been in contact with any of her peers over the past nine years.
Immaculate conception or perfectly explained scientific phenomenon? As told in a publication put online Monday June 24 by the University of Portsmouth, Ronaldo, a rainbow boa from Brazil surprised his world by giving birth to fourteen baby snakes earlier in the month.
However, the 13-year-old reptile, who lived alone in a vivarium of the establishment and who had not mixed with any of his peers for nine years, was from the start mistakenly identified as a male.
“One of the students discovered them (the babies, Editor’s note) during a routine check of the vivarium. At first we thought she must be wrong. We couldn’t believe our eyes!”, s ‘exclaims Amanda McLeod, animal care specialist at the university.
Parthenogenesis
The explanation given in the British university publication for this pregnancy described as “miraculous” is as follows: it is an extremely rare case of parthenogenesis: a natural form of asexual reproduction in which embryos develop without fertilization.
This phenomenon has already been documented in certain varieties of plants or other breeds of animals, but this would only be the third occurrence for a boa of this type.
“I’ve been breeding snakes for 50 years and I’ve never seen this happen before. It’s a fantastic opportunity for students to learn about the development of baby snakes,” said snake specialist Pete Quinlan. college snakes.
Since these multiple births, a precise determination of the sexes of the snakes has been carried out. They were then installed in fourteen different vivariums.
