She Blinded Me With Science

So, scientists have determined that a female shark in the Omaha, Nebraska zoo gave birth to a baby shark through parthogenesis. Parthogenesis is where an egg develops into a full animal without any male genetic material being added. As the linked article says, this is the first time that it's been confirmed in cartiliginous fish like sharks, though the article states that it has been observed in amphibians, reptiles and birds, and I have read that it also occurs with some kinds of insects. This is also the process that the dinosaurs in the movie Jurrasic Park supposedly underwent despite the fact that there were no males on the island.

This is pretty darn cool if you ask me. In the end the offspring is like a clone of the mother -- since no additional genetic material is added to the mix, the offspring has to be female and has all of the mother's original genetic material. Just another reminder that the world is always a bit stranger than you give it credit for.

Update: I found another article at the Discovery Channel website with some more detail. Apparently the shark was not a full clone of the mother, inheriting only 1/2 of the genetic material from the mother instead of all of it. Also, the young shark died shortly after birth, apparently from an encounter with a stingray in the tank, so it never got to grow to full size. Still, an interesting story that adds a bit of weirdness to the day.