US navy ships arrive off Philippines for war games

If you were traveling across the US and happen to drive through Nebraska, you will see a sign that says, “Things to Do in Nebraska,” then followed by another sign shortly after that says, “You are doing it.” I heard that joke so many times when I am sharing stories with those who have taken these kinds of drives.

Well, finally, something else happened in Nebraska. It happened six years ago but scientists only confirmed and published the results last week (it may have taken that long because they probably still could not believe things happen in Nebraska.) In fact, what happened was so extraordinarily shocking to biology that had this had happened to any of your family or friends, it would have had everyone talking. Imagine the ruckus: media being all over trying to get an interview with the suspected parents, therapists offering opinions on TV talk shows, religious folk insisting it is an ominous sign and psychics connecting all sorts of wild events to it, and enterprising individuals coming up with some potion for it in some TV shopping channel.

But it happened in a Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha Nebraska. One day, six years ago, a baby bonnethead shark (called a “pup”) showed up in a tank which would not have had the zoo keepers scratching their heads had there been a male bonnethead shark to help any of the three female bonnethead sharks in the process. But there was none and the only male suspect was a leopard shark. So they rounded up the lone usual suspect and for six years, the leopard shark was of course interrogated and cross-examined by scientists. The poor leopard shark probably racked his brain trying to remember what he could have done to be the suspected father of the bonnethead shark which really did not look like him at all.

But the leopard shark must have been so relieved when the scientists from Queen’s University, Belfast, and the Guy Harvey Research Institute in Florida finally published their collaborative work in The Royal Society journal Biology Letters last May 23. They have revealed that their tests have confirmed that the pup shark did not have any male DNA at all (so that exculpates the leopard shark) and only had DNA from one of the females. It was, indeed, from all accounts a virgin birth.

This virgin birth, technically defined as the development of an egg into an embryo without the need for sperm, is supposed to be happen, albeit rarely, in some animals such as reptiles, birds and amphibians but as Ian Sample of the Guardian last May 23 reported, it has never been found to happen in cartilaginous fish such as sharks. Until now.

What fascinates me about this story, aside from learning that something else happened in Nebraska at least, in the last six years, is that when it comes to other creatures other than ourselves, we have no qualms about investigating and getting into the sex lives of other creatures and even accept, as this case has shown, that there might not have been sex involved at all. We do not have another group of fundamentalist sharks entering the scene telling the sharks involved that they have to check them first against the Book of Shark Truths before the truth is revealed about the identity of the chosen pup. Sharks do not have philosophical debates about the ethics of having virgin births nor do they reserve this phenomenon for pre-selected individual sharks with special gifts. Sharks also do not impute special meanings, other than well, being a shark, to virgin births. They do not care.

But of course, we are not sharks although “shark” has commonly been used as an insulting “metaphor” for some humans with above average predatory tendencies. But it has been about 450 million years since we shared a common genetic ancestor with the shark. Nature’s wisdom has somehow imbued the female shark with the power to give in to the necessity of life moving on, even without male sharks of its kind. A few years ago with mice, the same thing occurred in a lab — scientists were able to coax a female egg to developing without the bravura of the sperm.

In humans, no scientific record yet exists so a warning to potential fathers: do not try this in the courts. You cannot invoke “virgin birth” in a paternity suit. Human babies are still, for the record, the product of a tango between the egg and the sperm, whether the ballroom occurs subrosa in the heat of passion or in the fertility lab. But do not despair, I am sure the curiosity for such a capacity in humans exists in teeming abundance, muted only by fear or reprisal from those who do not welcome intellectual honesty.

So if you go to an aquarium in Nebraska and you see one happy leopard shark with a “whew!” expression on its face, you know why.

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