North Carolina stingray a hit on late-night TV
HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. – Charlotte, the North Carolina stingray close to giving birth asexually, has gained worldwide fame and has now been a part of some famous late-night comedy shows, including most recently “Saturday Night Live.”
On the March 2 episode, SNL regular Ego Nwodim was dressed up as Charlotte the stingray during the Weekend Update skit. Co-anchor Michael Che started off with the background on Charlotte, a round stingray that’s been at the Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO in Hendersonville since 2016.
“Charlotte, a round stingray that’s lived for years in a North Carolina aquarium without a male companion, is pregnant, making people wonder who is the father and how did this happen? Here to comment is Charlotte the pregnant stingray,” he said.
Che got a surprising reply that was all in fun, of course.
“Michael, Michael, Michael, boy do I have some news for you . ... You’re going to be a daddy,” Nwodim said.
As of March 4, the short clip just over three minutes long that was posted on SNL’s YouTube channel had more than 500,000 views. Charlotte was also the topic of discussion on the late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live on Feb. 13.
Charlotte is still expecting one to four pups any day now, according to aquarium staff. She became pregnant through a process called parthenogenesis, a type of asexual reproduction in which offspring develop from unfertilized eggs.
Aquarium staff first noticed Charlotte’s small bump in September. According to Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons, a marine science researcher at Charles Darwin University in Australia, not much is known about the gestation period for round stingrays but they are known to birth pups twice a year.
“So it would be less than six months, I’d say,” she said in a previous Times-News article.