An intern caring for the snake found the freshly laid membranes in July, officials at the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center said, according to The Guardian. This year, her offspring didn’t survive, but two that were born last summer did, and they are on display at the nature center, about 100 miles south of St. Louis.
Many species of water snakes, including this one, give birth to live young, instead of eggs that hatch.
Virgin births are rare, but in some species this occurs through a process called parthenogenesis. It’s a process that can occur in some insects, fish, amphibians, birds, and reptiles, said herpetologist Jeff Briggler, who is with the Conservation Department. He noted it doesn’t occur in mammals, however.
What is parthenogenesis?
It’s a form of asexual reproduction, meaning that offspring develop from eggs that aren’t fertilized, and there hasn’t been any genetic contribution by a male. It happens when cells called polar bodies, which are produced with an animal’s egg and normally die, instead act like sperm and fuse with the egg, triggering cell division.
There are no other documented cases of parthenogenesis by a yellow-bellied water snake, the conservation department said, per The New York Post.
The Brahminy blind snake, a small burrowing snake that’s native to Southeast Asia has long been the only snake known to routinely reproduce without male involvement, said Robert Powell, a biology professor and snake authority at Avila University in Kansas City.
There is a highly unlikely chance that mama snake had stored sperm from her time in the wild, but Michelle Randecker, a naturalist at the center, said eight years is too long, and Powell agrees. A female snake usually can’t storm sperm for longer than a year, although there have been cases of successful storage lasting up to three years, Powell said, according to The Daily Mail.
“Long-term storage is unusual. When you run into situations like this, you always wonder, ‘Is that a possibility?'” he said. “If nothing else, it’s an interesting phenomena. Whether this is long-term storage or parthenogenesis, it’s cool.”
“Just another sign that nature works in mysterious ways.”
A.J. Hendershott, outreach and education regional supervisor for the conservation department, said there is pride in having the first snake of its species reproduce via parthenogenesis.
“This is the way you make discoveries when you keep things in captivity,” Hendershott said. “You learn things about what they’re capable of.”
The yellow–bellied water snake (Nerodia erythrogaster flavigaster) ranges from Florida to eastern Texas to central Georgia and north to Illinois, the Florida Museum of Natural History reports.
This non-venomous snake is active during the daytime. In the heat of summer it is active in the early morning, late afternoon, and at night. Fishes, frogs, tadpoles and other amphibians, as well as invertebrates are its preferred foods.
