Pregnant Stingray Mystery Grips TikTok: 'SHARK RAY HOO HA HA'

A female stingray has the world baffled, intrigued, and intently on baby watch.

Charlotte, a round stingray who calls a storefront aquarium in Hendersonville, North Carolina home, is due to have up multiple pups any day. The confusing part is that she hasn't been near a male stingray in at least eight years and shares her tank with sharks.

The only ones who know the truth about how Charlotte could have gotten pregnant aren't talking, so the mystery won't be solved until she gives birth, which can be any time now.

Surprise, surprise! Finding out Charlotte was pregnant was a confusing moment for the aquarium staff. They thought maybe the swelling was cancer at first, and not a pregnancy, simply because Charlotte hasn't been in a tank with a male stingray in many years.

It's possible that one of two very rare situations has happened for Charlotte to get pregnant. One possibility is through a process called parthenogenesis, where the eggs develop on their own without fertilization and create a clone of the mother.

The second possibility is that Charlotte mated with one of the young sharks in the tank.

"It's a once in a bluest of blue moons experience," aquarium's founder and executive director, Brenda Ramer said about parthenogenesis with a stingray, according to ABC News 13. "We're either going to have partho babies, or we're going to have some kind of potential mixed breed, and we're waiting for Jeff Goldblum to show up because we are 'Jurassic Park' right now!"

In mid-July 2023, the aquarium moved two 1-year-old white spot bamboo male sharks into the tank with Charlotte.

"There was nothing we could find definitively about their maturation rate, so we did not think there would be an issue," Ramer said. "We started to notice bite marks on Charlotte, but saw other fish nipping at her, so we moved fish, but the biting continued."

Ramer said bite marks are an indicator of mating in sharks, and Charlotte had several bite marks on her.

Charlotte is carrying up to four pups and is set to deliver any day now. DNA testing will probably be conducted on the pups to determine if they are a mixed breed or are clones of their mother.

Fans of Charlotte have been waiting weeks now for her pups' arrival. The last update the aquarium gave on social media was on February 21.

"Good evening, everyone. Charlotte update for February 21. As you can see there is a handprint on the tank from all of her visitors today. Everyone loved seeing Miss Charlotte," the video on TikTok and Instagram shares.

"She's still eating normal, she's swinging back around here to say hello. She ate shrimp, silversides, and some scallops today for Miss Kinsley when she got in the tank."

The video on TikTok received more than 3.7 million views and tons of comments from anxiously waiting fans.

"This reminds me of April the Giraffe," one follower wrote. Another added, "Her bump is so stinking cute like stuffed ravioli!"

Others had jokes to share about the possibility of a shark ray.

"SHARK RAY HOO HA HA," one person hilariously wrote. Another said, "That shark said I KNOW my babies are in there." One other viewer added, "I’m here for the SharkRays."

Many people are taking to the comment sections of recent videos to share their concern that there hasn't been an update in days, making some wonder if she gave birth already or if something is wrong.

On one recently shared video that has nothing to do with Charlotte, many commented about needing an update. Concern is beginning to grow that there hasn't been an update on the soon-to-be mama in days.

"We need an update on Charlotte!" one person wrote. Another added, "Is Charlotte okay?????"

In the most recently shared video on TikTok, the theme was the same in the comment section.

"Anyone else wondering why they didn’t post an update on Charlotte today? Is it baby time ☺️☺️☺️," one viewer wrote. "So any updates? Asking for millions of people …"

As of Saturday morning, we continue to wait to see if this pregnancy will require Maury Povich to intervene to reveal the father of the stingray pups.