60% of
the bonnethead shark’s diet is made up of seagrass, which they happily graze
upon as well as eating fish, crabs, snails and shrimp
Ian
SampleScience editor
Wed 5 Sep
2018 00.01 BSTLast modified on Wed 5 Sep 2018 02.50 BST
It is one
of the most radical rebrandings in history: contrary to their bloodthirsty
image, some sharks are not irrepressible meat eaters, but are happy to munch on
vegetation too.
According
to US researchers, one of the most common sharks in the world, a relative of
the hammerhead which patrols the shores of the Americas, is the first variety
of shark to be outed as a bona fide omnivore.
The
bonnethead shark is abundant in the shallow waters of the eastern Pacific, the
Western Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico, where they feed on crab, shrimp,
snails and bony fish. Though small by shark standards, adult females – the
larger of the sexes – can still reach an impressive five feet long.
Scientists
at the University of California in Irvine, and Florida International University
in Miami, decided to investigate the sharks’ dietary habits after reading
reports of the fish chomping on seagrass, the flowering marine plant that forms
subsea meadows in some coastal waters.
“It has
been assumed by most that this consumption was incidental and that it provided
no nutritional value,” said Samantha Leigh, a researcher on the team. “I wanted
to see how much of this seagrass diet the sharks could digest, because what an
animal consumes is not necessarily the same as what it digests and retains
nutrients from.”
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