See this snake? (It’s special.)

Elahe Izadi:

See this here yellow-bellied watersnake? Can she have it all?

Yes.

This snake at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center in Missouri has not had contact with a male snake for at least eight years. And, for the second year in a row, she has managed to give birth.

Missouri Department of Conservation researchers believe the snake may be the first of her species to experience “virgin births,” something more commonly seen in insects, said naturalist Jordi Brostoski. “It doesn’t happen in snakes all that often,” Brostoski said.

The snake’s virgin birth, in more scientific terms, is a process of asexual reproduction called parthenogenesis, in which females produce babies without any genetic contribution from males. A polar body functions almost like sperm and fertilizes an egg.