- How hard can it be to check if a snake has its double wang or not?
Life can be a strange and wonderful thing. It always keeps finding new, unexpected ways to surprise us.
Recently, it made a male snake give miraculous virgin birth to more than a dozen babies.
Well, at least everybody thought the snake was a male. Ronaldo, the birth-giving serpent, was identified as a male when “he” was rescued from his previous owner years ago.
Whoever observed Ronaldo’s junk clearly needs new glasses, though. That’s because Ronaldo turned out to be a female.
The snake’s caretakers figured that out after the Brazilian rainbow boa impregnated herself and birthed 14 healthy snakelets.
Yes, baby snakes are called snakelets. We’re somehow very happy we now know that.
Safe but Solitary
Ronaldo is a 13-year-old Brazilian rainbow boa. At six feet in length, the snake is an impressive sight.
That’s probably why Ronaldo is a popular attraction at his home at the City of Portsmouth College in southern England. Yet, the huge boa wasn’t born there.
We couldn’t find out where Ronaldo came from, but wherever it was, it wasn’t a good place. Some nine years ago, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) rescued the snake from its previous owner.
At that point, Ronaldo arrived at the Portsmouth College. During his initial physical check-up, the snake was determined to be a male.
Since then, he lived a happy but solitary life in his enclosure. According to the college, Ronaldo has not been in any contact with other snakes at least for as long as he’s been with them.
As such, there was no reason for anyone to question Ronaldo’s sex — the snake wasn’t having any, after all.
‘We Couldn’t Believe Our Eyes’
Yet, seemingly everything everyone thought they knew about Ronaldo went out of the window earlier this year. Everything started when the boa suddenly seemed to start putting on some weight.
“Ronaldo had been looking slightly fatter than usual, like he’d eaten a big meal,” said reptile specialist Pete Quinlan, who has been caring for Ronaldo as long as the snake has been at Portsmouth College.
As it turned out, however, Ronaldo wasn’t getting chubby. That became clear when “he” gave birth to 14 babies.
Oh yeah, we should probably mention that boas give live birth. They incubate their eggs inside their bodies and pop the babies out once they hatch.
“One of the students discovered [the baby snakes] during a routine vivarium check. At first, we thought she must have been mistaken,” recalled animal care technician Amanda McLeod.
“We couldn’t believe our eyes!” she added.
Quinlan was taken by total surprise as well.
“We never thought for a moment that he, or should we say she, was pregnant,” he admitted.
A Truly Rare Occurrence
You can’t really blame anyone for not expecting Ronaldo (or Ronalda?) to get pregnant, what with not having access to other snakes. The thing is, though, that some forms of life just don’t care about that and can knock themselves up.
Some plants and animals are capable of parthenogenesis. They have all the genetic material they need to make themselves pregnant without fertilization, so they can theoretically start pumping out surprise babies at any time.
The phenomenon is extremely rare in Brazilian rainbow boas, though. Portsmouth College says that this is only the third time in history that a captive individual underwent parthenogenesis.
“I’ve been breeding snakes for 50 years and I’ve never known this happen before,” said Quinlan.
With all that said, parthenogenesis isn’t the same as “true” pregnancy, since it doesn’t increase genetic diversity. All of Ronaldo’s babies are genetic clones of their mother.
That said, snake sex chromosomes work differently from mammals, so the snakelets may not all be female even when they’re Ronaldo’s clones. Quinlan is now hard at work trying to determine which of the little slithering things are male or female.
Here’s hoping he’ll do a better job than whoever checked what Ronaldo was packing. We don’t know how they missed it, considering snakes have two dongs.
You’re welcome for that information, by the way.
In Related News…
Ronaldo’s story is similar to that of Charlotte, a stingray at the Team ECCO Aquarium in North Carolina. As we wrote earlier in the year, Charlotte mysteriously became pregnant despite having no other rays in her tank.
There were two male sharks, though. Due to that, there was a bunch of speculation about whether Charlotte impregnated herself or engaged in some shark-on-ray action.
Well, there’s been an update. Unfortunately, it’s not good news.
Charlotte is no longer pregnant, and it’s questionable if she ever was. The aquarium claims that it saw ultrasound footage of the baby rays, but they’re no longer there.
Not only that, Charlotte is sick. Team ECCO said the ray has developed a “rare reproductive disease” that has had a negative impact on her lady parts.
As such, it’s possible that Charlotte really was miraculously pregnant at one point but the disease killed her babies. Some experts and online voices, however, are now accusing the aquarium of making up fake news to get free publicity.