Charlotte the Stingray Is Not Pregnant, Aquarium Owner Confirms

Fans who’ve been riding the wave around the mystery of Charlotte the stingray are finally getting some answers. 

Three and a half months after the Aquarium & Shark Lab by Team ECCO in Hendersonville, N.C., announced Charlotte’s pregnancy, the organization’s owner Brenda Ramer has confirmed to WLOS News 13 that the ray isn’t expecting.

In an interview published May 31, Ramer told the Asheville-based outlet Charlotte has a reproductive disease and that veterinarians have diagnosed the ray with diapause—noting, “We’re still trying to understand a lot of these terms ourselves.”

As for Ramer’s response to social media users who called the pregnancy into question and accused the aquarium of announcing it to get attention?

 “I can’t control what people think,” she continued, later adding, “I can only tell you what we know for certain. I’ve never been a liar. This was not a scam. This was not anything made up, but people do that. People have their own thoughts.”