'Ronaldo had been looking slightly fatter than usual': Snake thought to be male has 14 babies in rare 'virgin birth'

on the left, a baby snake in a person's palm, on the right, a box with straw with lots of baby snakes in it — The snakelets were discovered during a routine check of a boa that staff at the college thought was a male. (Image credit: City of Portsmouth College)

A captive snake thought to be male recently gave birth to 14 babies after almost a decade in isolation, its keepers say.

The 13-year-old Brazilian rainbow boa (Epicrates cenchria), named Ronaldo, has not been in contact with any other snake for at least nine years. Ronaldo was a rescue snake that a vet had previously identified as a male.

"One of the students discovered them during a routine vivarium check," Amanda McLeod, an animal care technician at the City of Portsmouth College in the U.K., where the snake is kept, said in a statement Monday (June 24). "At first we thought she must have been mistaken. We couldn't believe our eyes!"

This is the third "virgin birth" recorded in a Brazilian rainbow boa.

"Ronaldo had been looking slightly fatter than usual, like he'd eaten a big meal, but we never thought for a moment that he, or should we say she, was pregnant," Pete Quinlan, a reptile specialist at the college, said in the statement.

Virgin birth, known as parthenogenesis, is a type of asexual reproduction that takes place in a species that normally reproduces sexually. While rare, it's been recorded in several species in captivity, including birds, sharks, lizards, other snake species and a crocodile.

In parthenogenesis, eggs mature without fertilization by sperm. In some cases, eggs can be fertilized by a "polar body," which is a small cell that forms in the reproductive tract at the same time as an egg cell.