Netizens around the world are paying attention to a single 'shark baby' born in an Italian aquarium.
On the 19th local time, foreign media such as the New York Post in the US reported that a baby shark appeared one day in an aquarium where two female sharks lived in an aquarium on Sardinia Island, Italy.
Aquarium staff were bewildered when they discovered a baby shark that suddenly appeared.
In the last 10 years, the tank has only been inhabited by female sharks, and they have never allowed a male to enter the tank.
After this surprising fact became known through social media, local experts came up with a new theory to guess the identity of the baby shark.
It was said that one of the females in the tank must have given birth through 'unisexual reproduction'.
Monosexual reproduction is the reproduction of individuals only by females without fertilization, and is a phenomenon commonly observed in insects such as bees, aphids, and daphnia in the natural world. In particular, in the case of bees, if they develop from an unfertilized egg, they all become males, and only those that develop from a fertilized egg become females.
This phenomenon is known to be rare in amphibians, reptiles and fish. When the proportion of males in the habitat is significantly low, embryos are created by the division of only the egg in the female body, and in fact, the female is able to 'self-replicate' herself.
Marine biologists at the aquarium said they took DNA samples from newborn babies and asked them to test whether they were actually unisexual.
The aquarium said, "We named the baby shark 'Ispera', meaning 'hope'. We hope that the shark born like a miracle will bring hope in the era of Corona.
This is a 'news pick'.
(Photo='Acquario Cala Gonone' Facebook)