the female's vent. In many cases, the female resists by pressing her belly against the bottom and arching her tail; this may reflect mate choice on her part. The male has a limited time in which to achieve copulation, as while he is holding the female's pectoral fin in his mouth he is being deprived of oxygen. On the other hand, if the female is willing, the pair settles side-by-side with their heads pressed against the bottom and their bodies at an upward angle. After a gestation period of 10–13 months, females give birth to litters of 1–6 (usually 2–3) pups. The number of offspring is not correlated with female size; each female produces an estimated average of 12 pups over her entire lifetime. Parturition occurs from May to August (autumn and winter) in French Polynesia, in July (summer) off Enewetak Atoll, and in October (summer) off Australia. Females give birth while swimming, making violent twists and turns of their bodies; each pup takes under an hour to fully emerge. The newborns measure long and have relatively longer caudal fins than adults. This shark develops slowly compared to other requiem sharks; newborns grow at a rate of per year while adults grow as a rate of per year. Sexual maturity is reached at a length of around and an age of 8–9 years, though mature males as small as long have been recorded from the Maldives, suggesting regional variation in maturation size. On the Great Barrier Reef, males live to 14 years and females to 19 years; the maximum lifespan of this shark may be upwards of 25 years. In 2008, a whitetip reef shark produced a single pup through possibly asexual means at the Nyiregyhaza Centre in Hungary; previous instances of asexual reproduction in sharks have been reported in the bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo) and the blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus). Human interactions Unlike its Oceanic cousin, the white tip reef shark is more harmless and is seldom aggressive unless provoked. They are also fearless and curious, as the whitetip reef sharks may approach swimmers closely to investigate. However, these sharks readily attempt, and quite boldly, to steal catches from spear fishers, which has resulted in several people being bitten in the process. In some places, local whitetip reef sharks have learned to associate the sound of a speargun discharge or a boat dropping anchor with food and respond within seconds.