Science
A female snake can store sperm in her body for more than five years before using it for its intended purpose. The rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) was caught in Florida in 2005 and kept in a private collection for five years without any contact with other snakes. At the end of 2010, she unexpectedly gave birth to 19 cubs.
To understand what happened, Warren Booth of North Carolina State University took DNA samples from the mother and cubs. Booth originally relied on the “immaculate conception”, since this is what he is studying; at the immaculate conception, females give birth without the participation of males.
However, in this case, the baby snakes carried a different gene chain that was different from the one carried by their mother, so they mated before the snake was caught. Previous studies have shown that reptiles can actually store sperm in their bodies for several years, but this is the first genetically confirmed case.
Booth suspects that other reptiles may store semen even longer. “How long is anyone's guess,” he says. “It is becoming obvious that snakes have unconventional methods of procreation, including immaculate conception and long-term storage of sperm, but no one still knows what they are like They do,” explains William Holt, a specialist at the Institute of Zoology in London.