Ronaldo, a six-foot-long Brazilian rainbow boa constrictor kept at a British school, was thought to be male until he gave birth to 14 babies last month.

The boa hadn’t been in contact with other snakes for nearly a decade and appears to have undergone a natural process of asexual reproduction called parthenogenesis, which comes from the Greek word for “virgin birth.”

According to the school, this is the third confirmed case of such a birth among captive Brazilian rainbow boas that they know of.

Ronaldo lives at Portsmouth City University. The snakes are being used at an academic and vocational school in the south of England for 16-18 year olds to teach students how to care for animals.

“A colleague called me and asked why we had released a small snake with Ronaldo,” said Pete Quinlan, an animal technician at the university who has cared for the snakes for the past nine years.

Quinlan said his first thought on June 21st was that there must have been a mistake. Although it was his day off, he went to the scene and quickly realised the snake with Ronaldo was a baby rainbow boa constrictor.

“I was totally baffled by it,” he said, noting that he has been studying reptiles for more than 50 years.

“I’ve kept literally thousands of snakes in that time and bred a lot of snakes,” Quinlan added. “I’d never heard of this before.”

In a news release, the university described the event as “A Miracle Birth. However, some snakes and other animals, including crocodiles and honeybees, are known to produce offspring asexually.

Parthenogenesis is the development of an embryo without fertilization. This process is particularly Unusual among vertebrates including snakes.

While sexual reproduction requires a sperm to fertilize an egg, parthenogenesis produces polar bodies as a by-product of the egg-making process, which are then used to fill in the gap. These cells then recombine with the egg, giving the embryo two similar (but not identical) sets of DNA.

Parthenogenesis also occurs when reproductive cells replicate and recombine, a process that creates a clone of the mother, but it occurs primarily in plants and not animals.

Researchers are still investigating why parthenogenesis occurs in animals and how often it occurs.

Quinlan said some researchers believe snakes practice parthenogenesis, in which females spend most of their lives without mating.

In recent years, there have been several reports of animals reproducing asexually in captivity. Sharks at Brookfield Zoo gave birth to a baby shark through parthenogenesis after not having contact with a male shark for at least four years. 2021 Survey found California condors, a critically endangered bird, reproducing asexually in captivity despite having mates.

A stingray named Charlotte became pregnant parthenogenetically at an aquarium in North Carolina. He died on Sunday. The aquarium said last month that the ray (whose story was the subject of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch) is not pregnant. Diagnosed with a rare disease.

Quinlan said he initially adopted Ronald from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, an animal welfare charity. A vet told him Ronald was male, and Quinlan never questioned it. Once a snake becomes an adult, it’s harder to determine its sex than when it’s a baby, he said.

Ronaldo is a “very popular snake” at the school, Ms Quinlan said, adding that this should be a “really good experience” for the pupils as they had never looked after a newborn snake before.

Evie Allen, a student at the university who works with Ronaldo said he was “shocked” and “perplexed” when he heard from a friend that the snake had given birth to a baby.

“I honestly thought he was joking,” she said.

The university plans to keep one or two of the baby snakes and care for the rest until they have been fed a few times and are healthy enough to go to their new homes.

Ronaldo’s story has attracted attention around the world.

“We never expected it to take off as badly as it did,” said Paula Hetherington, the university’s director of marketing and communications.

“If you Google Ronaldo the snake right now, he seems to be more popular than Ronaldo the footballer,” Quinlan said.