Charlotte the Stingray Dies 5 Months After Viral Pregnancy

The saga of Charlotte the Stingray has travel to a bittersweet extremity ... arsenic the famed food has died.

The Aquarium and Shark Lab successful Hendersonville, North Carolina shared the heartbreaking update ... Charlotte passed distant Sunday amid attraction for an illness.

After thanking fans for their emotion and enactment during Charlotte's unconventional journey, her caretakers noted the aquarium volition stay temporarily closed ... but the different food volition inactive beryllium looked aft during this time.

Charlotte became an Internet sensation successful February, aft the aquarium announced her shocking gestation ... she had not shared a vessel with a antheral stingray successful 8 years. There were plentifulness of theories connected Charlotte's mysterious gestation ... the astir fashionable being parthenogenesis -- a benignant of asexual reproduction. Some scoffed, arguing different oversea carnal impregnated her.

It didn't instrumentality agelong for Charlotte's concern to marque its mode connected to "Jimmy Kimmel Live," arsenic good arsenic "Saturday Night Live" -- wherever Ego Nwodim portrayed the viral stingray connected 'Weekend Update.'

However, things took a bittersweet crook by the spring.

At the extremity of May, erstwhile Charlotte inactive hadn't fixed birth, aquarium proprietor Brenda Ramer issued an ominous update ... Charlotte was ne'er pregnant, alternatively was dealing with a reproductive disease, called diapause.

Brenda besides deed backmost astatine those accusing the aquarium of propagating a gestation hoax, insisting they ne'er fabricated details successful Charlotte's journey.

Charlotte was estimated to beryllium determination betwixt 12 and 14 years aged ... with the mean stingray surviving astir a decade.

RIP