Anisa Khalifa: If you're on TikTok or watch Saturday Night Live, you've probably heard about Charlotte the Stingray.
'SNL' clip: A brown stingray that has lived for years in a North Carolina aquarium without a male companion is pregnant, making people wonder who's the father and how did this happen? Here to comment is Charlotte the pregnant stingray.
Michael, boy, do I have some news for you. You gonna be a daddy! [crowd laughter]
Anisa: Now, normally a pregnant stingray wouldn't make headlines, but that lack of an obvious father fueled incredible interest online.
Unidentified Speakers: Have you heard about the mystery of the pregnant Stingray?
So there's a couple of possibilities as to how she got pregnant.
Anisa: As wild theories and scientific speculation grew, an absence of details and unusual behavior from Charlotte's aquarium raised some red flags. So one journalist went to check it out. There is definitely something strange going on here. I'm Anisa Khalifa. This is The Broad Side, where we tell stories from our home in North Carolina at the crossroads of the South.
This week, how a stingray named Charlotte became the most famous fish in the world, and the very real, very weird story behind her so called miraculous pregnancy.
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Anisa: Earlier this year, Emily Cataneo got wind of something that raised the eyebrows of marine scientists across the country. Emily is a freelance journalist and contributor with The Assembly, an online outlet based in North Carolina.
Emily Cataneo: Back in February, Brenda Ramer, who is the owner of an aquarium in Hendersonville, North Carolina, sent out a message to an aquarist listserv, which is basically a private space for people in the marine biology and aquarium communities, and she told them that she had the stingray that was pregnant, and she didn't know how that could be possible because there were no male stingrays in the tank.
Anisa: ECCO Aquarium owner Brenda Ramer posed two options for Charlotte's pregnancy.
Emily: Either parthenogenesis, which is the process of asexual reproduction, or one of the male sharks had impregnated. Right away, some of the marine biologists said, Hey, that is not possible for a shark to impregnate a stingray. As one scientist told me—
Unidentified Speaker: That is cuckoo banana pants as a theory of what happened here.
Emily: She then went to the press with the story and the press went wild.
Media and TikTok audio: This we're going to show you is Charlotte the stingray.
That the stingray was impregnated by a small male shark that was placed in her tank last July. Guys, the only way we're gonna find out is DNA.
It's like a Maury Povich episode of the Animal Kingdom.
Everyone is freaking out about it, including myself. So Charlotte had many, many fans on TikTok. TikTok loves Charlotte.
Emily: She's the Internet's favorite stingray.
TikTok audio: The stingray based in a North Carolina aquarium who was announced in February....
...update from Charlotte the stingray.
Emily: And it makes sense, she's very cute, she's very charismatic, you know, she's swimming around in her little tank. Um, the story just spread across the internet. Some people poked fun at it, but a lot of the outlets portrayed it as something that could happen.
From what I understand, the idea of a shark and a ray having offspring is completely ludicrous. One marine biologist I spoke to, David Shiffman, had some very strong words to share about the idea.
Shiffman: Sharks and rays are separated by as many millions of years of evolution as humans and snakes. If a human tried to mate with an anaconda, a lot of things would probably happen, but one of those things would not be a half human, half anaconda baby.
Anisa: Okay. That's a very evocative explanation.
Emily: Exactly. And that helps, I think, put into perspective how preposterous this claim was. So my understanding is that there's a possibility that she was pregnant, something went wrong with the pregnancy and her bulge. So Charlotte has this huge bulge. People have described her as a stuffed ravioli. In the article, I described her as an overstuffed dumpling. So, she looks pregnant, right?
There's also this other process that I should talk about called diapause, which is where a ray can actually get pregnant and then pause the pregnancy if she's under stress or in really cold water or something like that. But the thing is, diapause happens early in a pregnancy, when there's just a little egg that's just been fertilized. A ray would not get almost to full term about to deliver and then say, Oh wait, I'm actually going to keep these extremely energy intensive pup fetuses in my body. For months and months and months.
And I mean, I get it. I am pregnant right now. In three months if somebody said, Hey, you're stressed, just keep the fetus in there for six more months. I would say, absolutely not, that makes no sense. And it makes no sense from a biological or an evolutionary perspective either. And the aquarium has said, Oh, well, it's parthenogenesis and it's not an understood process. And we can't know what her gestation period will be because parthenogenesis is just this mysterious process that no one understands.
Anisa: I wanted to ask you about this because a lot of the, there was this hybrid theory that was going around on social media, but then there were also a lot of people joking about, oh, like the virgin birth and the immaculate conception. Is that actually a real stingrays?
Emily: Absolutely, yeah. So, these animals are really cool. There are so many things that can happen with their reproductive systems. And if Charlotte had undergone parthenogenesis, she would have been the first California round ray to have gone through this process observed by humans, which is cool, right?
From what I understand, that's certainly a finding that could perhaps have been publishable, definitely something that we would want to note, but not this like mind blowing miracle that people seem to think that it was because it has been observed in other stingrays and it's certainly been observed in sharks and many, many, many other kinds of animals too, although not humans.
Anisa: So normally, what would be the gestation period for this type of stingray?
Emily: For a California round ray, which is what Charlotte is, it would be three to four months. ECCO said that she got pregnant in September, which September to February is five months. And February was when they unveiled this news and said, Charlotte's going to give birth any day now, which would be slightly longer than the average gestation period of three to four months.
But, certainly not as long as eight months, which is what it has been now. And as the months and weeks went by, the Aquarium's updates became sparser and sparser. Just saying things like, Charlotte had scallops for dinner. Charlotte loved meeting the guests today. She made so many new friends. And people were commenting, Well, what's going on with her pregnancy? What's going on with her pups? Were you wrong? Was she never pregnant? Uh, is she okay?
Anisa: So at this point, concern and speculation is growing around Charlotte's pregnancy. When did you get involved in this? What did you decide to do?
Emily: So I come into the story when my editor at The Assembly. said, I think we should look into what's going on with Charlotte. She's perhaps one of North Carolina's most famous residents of 2024. And I said, you know what? I'll go to Hendersonville. I'll see what I can figure out.
Anisa: Tell us about traveling there and arriving at the aquarium.
Emily: Hendersonville is a very cute town, brick building lined main street, lots of cute shops, galleries, coffee shops.
The aquarium is in a storefront on that street. Um, I think it's important to remember that a lot of people hear aquarium and they think, Oh, this must be this huge place. But the truth is that anybody can start an aquarium. And this aquarium is very small. It's in a storefront. That's not to say that there can't be small aquariums and storefronts that are great, but I think it's important to point out that this may not be what a lot of people are picturing when I say aquarium.
It could be mistaken for a pet shop. So I went in. I went to speak to the young volunteers. They seemed like teenagers to me who were working behind the counter and they told me, you can't interview anybody in here unless you talk to our PR person. And I said, well, while I'm waiting for her to hopefully get back to me, would it be possible for me to just buy a ticket and come into this aquarium as a guest and look around?
And they said, sure. You just can't take any photos, no videos. You have to put away your audio recording equipment. And I said, fine. I looked around, there were a lot of tropical fish and tanks lining the wall. There were some fun facts up on blackboards. And then there was Charlotte. She was in the tank. She was fluttering about. I overheard a couple people talking about her, taking pictures of her. She was clearly a draw for some of the guests in the aquarium that day. And I see why people say she's a charismatic stingray. She's certainly a captivating animal for sure. So I left. I went to sit on the bench outside the aquarium.
And while I was sitting there, I saw a couple who I had seen seem very excited about Charlotte. And I saw them exit the aquarium. Specifically, the woman in the couple was a huge Charlotte fan. She'd been following Charlotte on TikTok for months.
Charlotte's fan: I really just wanted to see her looking like a stuffed ravioli and see if she was okay and actually physically there. That's pretty much it for me.
Emily: And she also expressed that she had been worried about Charlotte and had wondered if Charlotte was okay.
Charlotte's fan: And I think, especially within the last month, there hasn't been a lot of posts, and I think it's been pretty mysterious. Luckily, we already had plans to come, so we got to kind of find out what was going on and see it ourselves. So we're happy to see that she's in there and okay.
Emily: Little did I know, while I was doing these interviews on the sidewalk, the aquarium was inside calling the cops.
911 call audio: We have a news reporter harassing our guests outside of our doors. Um, I don't know if there's anything you guys can do about that.... White female in a white t shirt and she has her microphone and headphones on right now. Um, she has red hair.
Emily: And I just have to stress how weird this is. I have been a reporter for 15 years. This is my second encounter with the police. The first time a neo Nazi called the cops on me when I was doing a story on right wing graffiti in Berlin. And this is about a stingray in a passion project aquarium. This officer said, hey, are you a news reporter? I said, yes. She said, we've got reports of a news reporter out here harassing people.
Anisa: Harassing people?
Emily: Yes. And I said I was doing person in the street interviews. I didn't harass anybody. And I was like, this is really, really weird.
Then another officer approached and the two of them went into the aquarium. And I was like, Oh. I think the aquarium were the ones who called the police.
911 call audio: I'm calling from Team ECCO Aquarium and Shark Lab. We have a news reporter harassing our guests outside of our doors. Um, I don't know if there's anything you guys can do about that. Um, they're harassing our guests. And I don't know if you can send an officer down just to, just to make sure everybody's safe out there, but Do you know what news group it's with?
Anisa: So what happened next after the cops showed up?
Emily: I was sitting there and then the cops came back out and they said, look, so Brenda wants to have you booked for trespassing. And just a reminder, Brenda Ramer is the owner of this aquarium. We're not going to do that. You seem sweet. And I said, well, I also didn't break any laws. And they said, sure, but you know, this is a small town. We don't get a lot of news media. And that was for me when I first started saying, okay, there is something strange going on with this place. There is definitely something strange going on here.
Anisa: And I can imagine with your long experience as a reporter, this was also tingling some like sensors of, okay, something's going on here.
Emily: A pro tip for everyone out there, if you want to get reporters to not look into you, don't call the police on them for no reason. It's just, it's not a good idea. It's not a good way to get someone off a story.
Anisa: So, you didn't get arrested, and you started to dig into this some more. What did you find?
Emily: I researched scientists who had spoken out against the preposterous shark ray theory back in February and reached out to some of them to, uh, get their stance on what was going on now.
I also went on Facebook and started messing around in the comments on some of the posts that ECCO had made and some of the random Charlotte posts. And through that, I tapped into a community of marine biologists and aquarists who had been blocked by the aquarium for asking questions and trying to share accurate scientific information.
Anisa: So one aquarium expert you talked to was Larry Boles, who was one of the loudest voices. What did he say?
Emily: Larry is actually from North Carolina. He also grew up in a small town, I believe in the western part of the state. He worked at aquariums in North Carolina and he has worked in the aquarium industry for a long time.
And he had commented many, many, many times on ECCO's post. He estimated that he posted about a hundred comments and then they blocked him.
Boles: I went to the comments section with the idea that the least thing I can do is correct people's misunderstandings about the biology.
Emily: And he made a second Facebook account and they blocked him again. And he made a third Facebook account. I think they blocked him and then unblocked him and then blocked him again. There's just been a lot of blocking. So, and from the beginning he had answered Brenda's post on that listserv that I mentioned earlier saying, Hey Brenda, that's really exciting that your ray is pregnant. Shark ray hybrids are not a possibility and I would encourage you to have a veterinarian look at this animal to make sure everything's okay.
Boles: And really, from the beginning, all I said and all my colleagues said was, this animal needs to see a veterinarian. That's it. That's, it's really simple.
Emily: He was able to provide me with an overview of what may be going on with Charlotte, and I started to piece together some of the theories for what might be happening.
Anisa: And what were their theories about what's going on with Charlotte?
Emily: There is a possibility that Charlotte did get pregnant through parthenogenesis and that she is still pregnant. It would be unusual for a California round ray to have an eight month gestation period, but it's not impossible. Another possibility is that she was pregnant, but something went wrong with the pregnancy, so she now has deceased embryos or calcified eggs inside of her, and that's what's causing the bulge.
She might also have overindulged. As one aquarist told me, sometimes, um, male sharks and rays can look like this, can look like stuffed raviolis, and it's just because they were manipulating their caretakers for some extra snacks. So it could just be that Charlotte's a snacky lady and she's gained weight.
Anisa: Like many of us.
Emily: Exactly. Very, very relatable. It could also be edema, which is a kind of swelling. It could be parasites. It could be an infection. On the infection note, Larry Boles told me that there are a variety of reproductive diseases that older female stingrays living in captivity can get. And unfortunately, those conditions, as well as deceased embryos and calcified eggs staying in the womb, a stingray's body for months can cause infection, and infection without treatment from antibiotics could lead to sepsis, which could lead to death. So there are a lot of different options for what could be going on with Charlotte. Unfortunately, some of them are not so good for her.
Anisa: So you published your story about a week ago, and it's been a busy week since then. What's the latest on Charlotte's condition?
Emily: It's been crazy. It's been an absolutely bonkers week. There are so many Charlotte fans around the world and a lot of people were really appreciative that there had finally been an article that really did a deep dive into what might be going on.
And then, last week, the aquarium made a post where they announced that Charlotte had a reproductive disease. And they framed it as something that was completely unexpected, completely unforeseeable. These are not true statements. Marine biologists, people in the aquarium community, have been speculating since February that she might have a reproductive disease. So this was not unforeseeable, not unexpected.
Anisa: Has anyone heard anything from Brenda Ramer since your story broke?
Emily: Yes, Brenda broke her silence in an interview with the ABC local news affiliate out in Western North Carolina. And in it, Brenda is sitting on the public bench outside the aquarium, the very bench I was sitting on when I had my brush with the law. And the interviewer asks her a lot of questions, including about the so called rare and unexpected reproductive disease.
Ramer: We originally did have her confirmed as carrying, but with the development of this disease, she is no longer viable.
Emily: She asks if Charlotte was ever pregnant, and she asks Brenda whether this was a hoax or a scam.
Ramer: It was not a hoax, and it was not a scheme to make money. That's not what I'm here for, or about. So, um, I have to release my students, um, so, but I want to thank you so much.
Anisa: Why not just be more transparent along the way instead of, you know, shutting down the discourse and the concern, not answering any questions until now?
Emily: I don't think anybody really knows, and unfortunately, I think we may never know. We're sort of back to square one in a way, where people are speculating online, theories are running rampant, except now, there are theories and speculation about the aquarium's ultimate motivations. A lot of people think it was a scam, they feel cheated. It was perhaps for publicity, for money, it could be that the aquarium thought she was pregnant at first and didn't want to admit to their error. But ultimately, we'll never really know why Brenda and her team acted the way that they did.
Anisa: So for people who weren't keyed into Charlotte as a TikTok star and who haven't been following this or who don't necessarily know about Charlotte's story, Why should they care about Charlotte and other animals in aquariums like this across the country?
Emily: One thing that Larry Boles urged me and other readers and listeners to do is to think of this as a larger issue. If Charlotte had never gone viral, if she had never become North Carolina's most famous stingray and TikTok's darling stingray, she might just be in the same position, but nobody would know and nobody would care. And there are thousands of Charlottes. Across the country, there are many animals that are living in unregulated aquariums with no oversight, and unfortunately, because of the way animal welfare laws work, there's not too much people can do about it.
I think it's about awareness. I know for myself, I have thought a lot about roadside zoos and try to be conscientious about going to places that treat mammals and birds well. I hadn't thought too much about aquariums before, but now I certainly will. So I guess my hope for the story is that people will pay both more attention to what kind of aquarium facility they're supporting and also maybe get more interested in issues related to the ocean and pay a little bit more attention to animals like Charlotte that may be imperiled you because of climate change, because of the environment, because of human activity. If this opens up people's interest in marine biology and gets them to think deeply about those issues, then I think that's great.
Anisa: Emily, thank you so much for taking us on this wild ride.
Emily: It was my pleasure.
Anisa: This episode of The Broadside was a co production with The Assembly. If you'd like to read Emily's article about Charlotte at their website, we've dropped a link in the show notes. Charlie Shelton Ormond is our producer. Our editor is Jared Walker. Our executive producer is Wilson Sayre. Broadside is a production of WUNC North Carolina Public Radio.
You can email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or a comment. Or share it with a friend. I'm Anisa Khalifa. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll be back next week