at a North Carolina aquarium this winter despite not having shared a tank with a male of her species for many years has died.late Sunday that the stingray, Charlotte, died after getting a rare reproductive disease. It didn’t go into further detail.The aquarium, which is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, announced in February that Charlotte had gotten pregnant despite not having shared a tank with a male stingray in at least eight years.
The pregnancy was thought to be the result of a type of asexual reproduction called parthenogenesis, in which offspring develop from unfertilized eggs, meaning there is no genetic contribution by a male. The mostly rare phenomenon can occur in some insects, fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles, but not in mammals.