-------- Mate-less shark finds way to give birth -

[Rhonda]

Mateless Shark finds way to give birth


-------- Mate-less shark finds way to give birth ---------

PHOENIX - Twilight the shark is no longer the lone shark
in a Phoenix high school class's fish tank; she's a mom
despite being celibate for four years. Carl Hayden
Community High School teacher Fredi Lajvardi and his
science students investigated the birth and discovered
that it's rare, the Arizona Republic reported Tuesday. "As
far as we know, we are the third case worldwide," Lajvardi
told the Phoenix newspaper. This type of birth is known as
parthenogenesis, in which an unfertilized egg develops
into a new pup, said Lajvardi, program manager for the
Carl Hayden Center for Marine Science. "Normally, it would
recombine with the father's half of the gene," the teacher
said. "But because there is no father, the mother provided
the other half." The week-old pup, which students named
Dawn, was born to the white-spotted bamboo shark living in
one of the school's marine-science classrooms, the Republic
reported.

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