Shark's virgin birth stuns scientists!

Birds do it. Bees do it. Now it seems that sharks are the latest, and largest, creatures that are able to reproduce without having sex, a finding that could have important implications for conserving these endangered fish.

A female hammerhead shark has given birth without the help of a male, after genetic tests revealed that its baby shark had no paternal DNA.

An international team reports that the shark's "virgin birth" was down to an unusual method of reproduction known as "parthenogenesis", where an egg starts to divide without being fertilized.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/05/23/eashark23.xml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6681793.stm

Humpback whales lost near Vacaville, California!

A humpback whale mother and her calf made the 90-mile river journey from the San Francisco bay to the Port of Sacramento in the Sacramento River.

Biologists hope to get the whales back into the ocean, where food is more plentiful and the saltwater can heal their cuts. Recorded whale sounds worked in 1985 with a humpback nicknamed Humphrey, which swam in the delta for nearly a month before returning to the Pacific.

The two likely had been on their northward migration from Mexico up the California coast when they were sidetracked, biologists said. Because they are at the end of their hibernation season, they have less blubber to rely on for fuel than they would later in the summer or fall.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/18/delta.whales.ap/index.html