Cat sharks Kai and Gerda — who received their new home at the Open Ocean Minsk’s Centre of Oceanography — are soon to become parents: recently, they laid two eggs (each half the size of an adult’s palm).
“This is a true event for us. Indian coral cat sharks give birth rarely in captivity,” explains the Centre’s Director, Alexey Azarov. It takes eight months for the eggs to hatch but visitors to the Centre can watch the embryos’ development: daily changes are evident through the thin walls of the shells. After a few months, they’ll receive their tails and fins and, later, these small predators will break their shells, to begin searching for food.
Kept in a special incubator, the eggs and quality of water is being supervised by the local children’s scientific oceanographic society. Some already boast experience: the first cat shark at the Centre was born in Minsk four years ago (its egg received from Indonesia).
By Nadezhda Dekola
