'Virgin' watersnake pops out mulitple baby snakes alone - no males required

This yellow-bellied watersnake in Missouri hasn't had contact with a male snake for at least eight years and has somehow managed to give birth for the second year in a row.

Researchers at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Centre believe that this snake may be the first of her species to experience “virgin births,” the Washington Post reports.

In more scientific terms, a virgin birth is a process of asexual reproduction called parthenogenesis.

This type of reproduction occurs more commonly in insects and happens when the unfertilised ovum develops into a new individual, resulting in an embryo-like cell cluster from which stem cells can be harvested.

“It doesn’t happen in snakes all that often,” naturalist Jordi Brostoski said.

"She's at that age where she's completely able to reproduce... It seems like a reproductive survival technique," Brostoski said. "Without a male, she wants to go ahead and produce offspring. That's what she's driven to do."

An intern at the Missouri conservation centre made the unusual discovery of a bunch of membranes located inside the watersnake's cage.

"I thought, ‘What joker put tomatoes in here for the snake’,” intern Kyle Morton said in a release.

None of the offspring from this year survived, Brostoski said.

But the two babies she gave birth to last year are still living and in good health and on display at the centre about 160 kilometres south of St Louis.

Although it is possible that the snake has stored sperm from when she was in the wild - eight years ago - usually a female snake cannot store sperm for longer than one year.

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