Now her “false pregnancy” could make a splash.
Charlotte the stingray that miraculously became pregnant despite having no males in her tank has a “rare reproductive disease” — that could be a sign she was never really knocked up at all, biologists said Friday.
The Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville, North Carolina, said the stingray — who was previously thought to have fertilized herself through an unusual process called parthenogenesis — released a vague announcement about her illness Thursday.
“The reports show that Charlotte has developed a rare reproductive disease that has negatively impacted her reproductive system,” the aquarium wrote on Facebook. “The findings are truly a sad and unexpected medical development.”
Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO/Instagram
It didn’t say the name of the disease or whether she still had given birth.
But a biologist specializing in stingrays told The Post Friday the celebrity sea creature — who captured the world’s attention with her possible “virgin” conception — may have suffered from a “false pregnancy-”style sickness caused by living in captivity.
The “polycystic condition” can throw female stingrays’ hormones out of whack due to the artificial environment, causing them to produce milk and look bloated and pregnant, said University of North Florida biologist James Gelsleichter.
“Female stingrays in captivity can develop this weird polycystic condition where you have almost a false pregnancy where eggs start to develop,” said Gelsleichter.
“Sometimes their hormone cycle gets messed up, estrogen stimulates the uterus to make this milk,” he said. “The uterus becomes engorged and they become distended and look pregnant.”
“This could cause someone to think a female was pregnant when she wasn’t,” he said.
Charlotte may have never really been pregnant at all, he said — adding it’s unclear if there was a conclusive ultrasound.
Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO/Facebook
“It could have been this [all along],” he said.
Researchers had theorized Charlotte got pregnant through a rare process called parthenogenesis, in which eggs develop on their own without fertilization and create a clone of the mother.
Others said she may have been knocked up by a 1-year-old white spot bamboo male shark, which had been in her tank — but biologists said Friday there was almost zero chance that was true.
“That is cuckoo banana pants. That’s not what happened,” David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist at Arizona State University, told The Post.
“Their boy bits and girl bits don’t add up, and neither does their DNA.”