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Will it be reported that another species of animal has been immaculately conceived in the next year?

Current forecast: 34% chance 5%
Combining all predictions, the current forecast is that this is 34% likely to happen (down 5% in last 1 day)

Recently, scientists used DNA tests to confirm that a female Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit had produced a baby in a Virginia zoo. Nothing special about this ... except that the female had had no contact with any males of her species!

This type of immaculate conception is known by scientists as spontaneous parthenogenesis. It occurs when a baby is conceived without male sperm fertilizing the female's eggs. In the type of parthenogenesis seen in sharks, the mother's chromosomes split during egg development. How the sharks do it is unclear. They may use a hormone to trigger eggs to develop in this manner in the absence of males. Or perhaps if eggs remain unfertilized with no males around, a certain fraction develop into embryos.

There is only one other known instance of this happening with sharks. However, other species known to be able to reproduce in this way include komodo dragons, snakes, birds, fish and amphibians.

Read more here.


Settlement details: As reported by a major mainstream news source. Must be a species (not just new subspecies, eg grey nurse shark) that has no previous recordings of parthenogenesis. If no news by suspend date, question will settle as 'no'.

 
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Yes
34%
No
66%
Activity: H$33,874
Question suspends in 45 weeks
 

Predictions (23)

23 predictions

6 weeks ago
filanator predicted No (H$30 at 66%)
6 weeks ago
bigken1 predicted Yes (H$20 at 40%)
6 weeks ago
syzslack predicted Yes (H$100 at 39%)
7 weeks ago
donquixote predicted Yes (H$100 at 39%)
7 weeks ago
apokalexsys predicted No (H$100 at 53%)
more

Comments (2)

The settlement details are confusing. There are many different species of sharks. While yes, it is true that there are many subspecies within those species, there are still many different species of sharks. The blacktip shark, Carharinus limbatus, is in the family known as requiem sharks. That family includes many different species such as tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) and blue sharks (Prionace glauca), several of which have already been shown to exhibit parthenogenesis. This is not news, though it is often portrayed that way in the news. To get to the subspecies level of specificity, we'd need to be adding a third Latin word to each species name and there is no reason to go there. Other species of sharks than just blacktips have already been documented exhibiting parthenogenesis. For example: http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/parthenogenesis_now_sharks_can_have_virgin_births_too bonnethead sharks in 2001.
posted 5 weeks ago
Even worse there is a gross misunderstanding of immaculate conception - it has NOTHING to do with a virgin birth. The concept of immaculate conception is that Mary, the mother of Christ, was born without original sin. Nothing to do with the birth of her son......
posted 1 day ago

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