Weird Science Wonders is a series of articles that I am starting to write about things that are different than my usual articles. These articles will not necessarily be about biomedical engineering, but about something in science that is anomalous in nature.

At Carl Hayden High School in Arizona, a marine biology teacher kept a pet shark in her classroom. The female shark, Twilight, had been alone in her tank for four years. On September 12 students saw a baby shark in the tank with her. Although the mother did not have any contact with other animals, she was somehow impregnated and gave birth to a young, Dawn (shown below).

This is the third known case worldwide of an unfertilized egg forming into a pup, the process is known as parthenogenesis. In this process, the mother’s gene divides in half and then, rather than combining with a male’s genes, it recombines with its own collection of genes to begin the process of a new pup. Scientists visit the high school on 3333 West Roosevelt St. constantly to analyze this new phenomenon.

-Amy

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Weird Science Wonders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.