Wednesday 26 September 2018

First known omnivorous shark species identified



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.”

No comments:

Post a Comment

You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!

Related Posts with Thumbnails

ShareThis