Scientists have recently made a remarkable discovery, reporting the first-ever documented case of a virgin birth in crocodiles. The incredible finding involves a captive American crocodile Crocodylus acutus, which had been living in solitude for 16 years at a zoo in Costa Rica.
When you believe in science, the idea of a "virgin birth" sounds like a story straight from the bible. However, the phenomenon known as parthenogenesis does exist. There have been documented accounts of many animals including lizards, snakes, sharks and birds such as the California condor, hatching from unfertilised eggs.
"Over the past two decades, there has been an astounding growth in the documentation of vertebrate facultative parthenogenesis (FP). This unusual reproductive mode has been documented in birds, non-avian reptiles—specifically lizards and snakes—and elasmobranch fishes. Part of this growth among vertebrate taxa is attributable to awareness of the phenomenon itself and advances in molecular genetics/genomics and bioinformatics, and as such our understanding has developed considerably", say the team of scientists in the study.
This is however the first case of parthenogenis occuring in a crocodile, which is extremely interesting to scientists.
According to the scientists: "The latter group [crocodiles] is particularly interesting because unlike all previously documented cases of FP in vertebrates, crocodilians lack sex chromosomes and sex determination is controlled by temperature."
The female crocodile in question was kept on her own for 16 years in a zoo in Costa Rica. During this period of isolation, without any contact with male crocodiles, the female crocodile managed to reproduce and lay a clutch of 14 eggs, which were artificially incubated. Although the eggs failed to hatch, there was one that contained a fully formed foetus. This foetus was genetically identical to its mother and had no genetic material from any males.