Ronaldo, a 6-foot Brazilian rainbow boa constrictor kept at a school in England, was thought to be male — until the snake gave birth to 14 babies last month.
The boa had not had contact with another snake for nearly a decade, so she appears to have undergone a natural process of asexual reproduction called parthenogenesis. The term is derived from the Greek words for “virgin birth.”
The school said this is the third documented case of this type of birth that it is aware of from a Brazilian rainbow boa in captivity.
Ronaldo lives at the City of Portsmouth College, an academic and vocational school for 16- to 18-year-olds in southern England, where the snake is used to help train students about how to care for animals.
“I received a call from a colleague of mine asking me why I had released some small snakes in with Ronaldo,” said Pete Quinlan, an animal technician at the college who has cared for the snake for the last nine years.
Quinlan said his initial thought that day, June 21, was that there had been a mistake. Although it was his day off, Quinlan went in and immediately recognized that the snakes with Ronaldo were baby rainbow boa constrictors.
