World’s Longest Snake Thelma The Python Has Virgin Birth

A reticulated python who holds the title of world’s longest snake has had a virgin birth, a study revealed.

Thelma, 11, produced six female offspring in June 2012 at Louisville Zoo in Kentucky – despite no male being anywhere near the 200lb (91kg) snake.

And new DNA evidence published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society has revealed that the six-foot snake is the sole parent in what is the first example of virgin birth in reticulated pythons.

‘We didn’t know what we were seeing. We had attributed it to stored sperm,’ the zoo’s curator of cold-blooded animals, Bill McMahan, told National Geographic.

‘I guess sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.’

Virgin births – known as parthenogenesis – occur when cells produced with an animal’s egg that would normally die behave like sperm and fuse with the egg.

And while it has been documented in other animals – boa constrictors, birds and sharks, for example – scientists are still unsure as to why it happens.


Mr McMahan has speculated that in

Thelma’s case, her virgin birth may have been triggered by ideal living conditions.

‘It takes a lot out of pythons to reproduce, and she had everything she needed. I had fed her a really big meal, 40lbs of chicken,’ he said.


‘She was living in an exhibit larger than the typical size. There were heat pads. Everything was optimal.’

Despite having only one parent, the offspring are half-clones, with some looking similar to her and others displaying different patterns altogether.

While they are healthy in the zoo, they would struggle in the wild because they are ‘highly inbred and often die early’, said biologist Warren Booth, of the University of Tulsa, said.