A female stingray in a North Carolina Aquarium shocked staff after getting pregnant - despite not being in a tank with male stingrays for more than eight years.
Stingray shocked aquarium staff with pregnancy that could give birth to shark-stingray hybrid
Charlotte is expected to give birth to up to four pups in the coming weeks.
Staff were relieved that the marine animal didn't have a tumour and was in fact expecting after undergoing an ultrasound.
Brenda Ramer, executive director of the sea life center in Hendersonville and Shark Lab, told 'ABC 13 News': "We were all like, 'Shut the back door, there's no way.'
"We thought we were overfeeding her. But we were overfeeding her because she has more mouths to feed."
It turns out, according to an expert, Charlotte could have mated with five small sharks sharing the same tank, meaning the pups will likely be a stingray-shark hybrid.
Kady Lyons, a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, has said it's the only known case she has ever heard of.
She commented: “I’m not surprised, because nature finds a way of having this happen."
Lyons clarified: “We should set the record straight that there aren’t some shark-ray shenanigans happening here."
Instead, Charlotte's egg fused with another cell leading to the creation of an embryo.