Exclusive: Charlotte the stingray is not pregnant, owner confirms
HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — After months of suspense and anticipation for stingray babies in Hendersonville, News 13 has confirmedCharlotte the stingray is not pregnant.
The question of whether she ever was could remain unanswered as vets and lab results now confirm, according to her owner, she's not pregnant.
Brenda Ramer, the owner of Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO on Main Street in Hendersonville confirmed the news to News 13 exclusively after the aquarium posted information on its Facebook page that Charlotte had a reproductive disease that "negatively impacted her reproductive system." The post stopped short of stating Charlotte wasn't pregnant.
SAD UPDATE: CHARLOTTE THE STINGRAY HAS DEVELOPED RARE REPRODUCTIVE DISEASE, TESTING SHOWS
The story has created a bit of a national frenzy following Charlotte since February when the aquarium, using ultrasound images, reported Charlotte had become pregnant on her own without a male stingray swimming around with her.
"The labs show she has a reproductive disease," said Ramer. "That's all it's called is a reproductive disease and that's the tricky part. If you just look up reproductive disease you'll start getting, there were papers written in 2008, 2013. There are a couple of papers out there in regard to it."
Ramer said she's trying to get the information out to a level people can understand around possibly what happened that ended Charlotte's pregnancy.
Ramer said she has known Charlotte wasn't pregnant since last Friday. She said her vets have given her a diagnosis of "diapause" as to why perhaps Charlotte's reported pregnancy ended.
"We're still trying to understand a lot of these terms ourselves." Ramer is aware of people's social media posts on Facebook and TikTok, dubious of whether Charlotte was ever pregnant at all.
"I can't control what people think." Ramer said she's an educator and her focus has been on her nonprofit aquarium.
MARINE BIOLOGIST: WHY CHARLOTTE THE STINGRAY MIGHT BE HAVING A LONGER-THAN-USUAL PREGNANCY
"I can only tell you what we know for certain. I've never been a liar. This was not a scam. This was not anything made up, but people do that. People have their own thoughts."
Ramer said she's always been transparent with Charlotte's status and she felt comfortable with the latest post where the aquarium disclosed that Charlotte had a reproductive disease. Ramer said she heard from the vets looking after Charlotte last Friday who confirmed to her the stingray wasn't pregnant. She would not give News 13 any vet names because she said they asked that their names not be made public amid the national scrutiny of the whole ordeal.
Ramer said in a normal pregnancy a stingray is pregnant three to four months. Charlotte was alleged to have had what's called a parthenogenesis pregnancy.
Some helpful resources:
This story will be updated.