Bamboo Shark
The whitespotted bamboo shark, Chiloscyllium plagiosum, is a carpet shark with an adult size that approaches one metre in length This small, mostly nocturnal species is harmless to humans. The whitespotted bamboo shark is occasionally kept as a pet in larger home aquariums. It can grow up to 93 centimetres (37 in) long. Dorsal fins with convex posterior margins. Color pattern of white and dark spots, with dark bands and a brown body. The coloration is unique in this family making it very simple for identification. The teeth of bamboo sharks are not strongly differentiated. Each tooth has a medial cusp and weak labial root lobes with 26–35 teeth on the upper jaw and 21–32 teeth on the lower jaw. Whitespotted bamboo sharks are oviparous (egg laying). The eggs are approximately five inches long and hatch after 14 or 15 weeks. The young hatch out at approximately 6 inches in length. Doug Sweet, curator of fishes at the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit reports that in July 2002 a clutch of eggs from a female whitespotted bamboo shark hatched without any apparent fertilization This appears to be the first reported example of parthenogenesis in this species. A female Chiloscyllium plagiosum that had no contact with a male for 6 years, gave birth to 3 young at the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit, Michigan. There are many theories for this miraculous incident but non confirmed. Among these theories the three most likely would be that the female contains both the male and the female reproductive organs; the female has the ability to store sperm for that long; and lastly that the female has somehow stimulated the eggs without sperm, process called parthenogenesis.
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