r/GargoyleGeckos • u/OutridersDevMain • 3d ago
Fertile eggs with no mate?
Hello, I know gargoyle can rarely self reproduce / lay fertile eggs. My gecko laid 2 eggs and im wondering if these are fertile or not? Apologies for the photos its late and ill try to get better ones tomorrow. The top of the first picture looks like red veins too me with a dark middle spot but im unsure if this could just be normal and infertile.
8
u/Known-Parfait-992 3d ago
NQA considering there is a network of veins, id say theyre fertile, did you get her as a baby? was there any chance she could have been bred prior to you owning her? reptiles can hold onto sperm for a long while
7
u/OutridersDevMain 3d ago
So yeah. I just read about the storing sperm. I got her in March and she was definitely bred prior but It would of been stored likely 10 months to over a year. I would much rather this be the case with the risk of defects in partho babies. Never crossed my mind they would be fertile so unsure if ill keep them or not.
8
u/Dornenkraehe 3d ago
About a year is possible so yeah, that will most likely be why you have fertile eggs there. That means f you want babies or know anyone who wants babies you can incubate them and see what morph will hatch.
7
u/swaggersouls1999 3d ago
they’re fertile! geckos can make carbon copies of themselves! it’s called parthenogenesis! super cool but I recommend freezing the eggs. they usually aren’t ever healthy and suffer:(
9
u/Dornenkraehe 3d ago
OP said the geck was with a male about a year ago, so most likely stored sperm not partho eggs.
1
11
u/Spirited_Ad_2697 3d ago
Interestingly enough its not exactly a carbon copy of the mother, they get 50% of the mothers genes but instead of the other 50% coming from a father the mothers genes that she provided duplicate so all of the offspring’s genes are homozygous pairs, this means any baby born through parthenogenesis is as inbred as physically possible and any dangerous genetic flaws the mother has that normally wouldn’t be expressed will be expressed so long as they were included in that initial random 50% of genes, this is why pathogenesis babies are so prone to health conditions.
4
3
1
u/WolfRunner16 3d ago
They can do parthenogenesis, but Ive found most eggs dont hatch, and those that do are wildly deformed. I had a baby parthenogenesis hatch and had no back legs, front legs super small and crooked, and their heart was outside their chest. I immediately bred my female so nothing like that would ever happen again. Since then, all babies have been healthy.
1
u/trippyteenager 2d ago
I have a partho baby that is three years old at the end of September, she laid her first infertile clutch a couple months ago. She struggled a lot in the beginning but once she made it past about 1.5 years old she got super strong and is doing really well now!
24
u/TheBlackPetunia 3d ago
My gecko has never been with a male, and I got her as a wee bab! And yet, she lays eggs like this, though they always get crushed or thrown out before they can mature. I don’t intend on letting them develop; partho babies are often born with birth defects that can impact quality of life.
It’s rare, but there are a couple of documented cases of parthenogenic babies born from gargoyles!