A team of experts at Portsmouth City College have revealed that the Brazilian rainbow snake has given birth to 14 chicks without mating in an extremely rare case.
In a process called parthenogenesis, some species are able to reproduce without the need for a partner of the opposite sex.
Pete Quinlan, an animal welfare specialist at the college, believes this is only the third case of a captive Brazilian rainbow python anywhere in the world.
Although the snake was female, Quinlan and the staff thought it was male, which led them to name it "Ronaldo", after the famous Brazilian soccer player, Ronaldo.
Quinlan has been looking after Ronaldo for the past nine years, since he was rescued by the RSPCA.
For the past two years, Ronaldo has lived at Portsmouth City College, and the snake has never had the opportunity to mate, Quinlan claims.
"Ronaldo looked fatter than usual, as if he had eaten a big meal, but we didn't think for a moment that he was, or should we say she was, pregnant. I've been raising snakes for 50 years and I never knew this could happen before," he says.
One of the students soon discovered 14 baby snakes in the cage.
Although this may sound like a miracle (parthenogenesis), it is actually a completely natural, if rare, process. During sexual reproduction, genetic material from a male and female combine to produce offspring. But during parthenogenesis, only the female's genetic material is used, eliminating the need for a male partner.
“The resulting chicks are clones of the mother,” explains Catherine Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the British Herpetological Society.
However, due to the different ways in which their genes are expressed, each Ronaldo chick still has slight differences in genetic markers.
Although native to South America, the non-venomous Rainbow is kept and bred as pets in other parts of the world, including the UK.