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Vegetarian sharks

10.01.2018

Scientists have found that shovel sharks (distant relatives of hammerhead fish) can eat algae and even gain weight quite well on a "green" diet.

Sharks are known as one of the most dangerous marine predators that are not averse to feasting on humans. However, scientists have found that not all sharks are radical meat eaters: some of them, as it turned out, love greens. For example, Sphyrna tiburo, also known as the shovel shark or small hammerhead fish, which often hunts in shallow water, prefers shrimp, small crabs and small fish that live in kelp beds. In 2007, researchers found something strange in the intestines of one of these sharks: instead of the inhabitants of the marine "jungle", there were only algae themselves.

To find out why, a graduate student placed several sharks in a salt water tank and kept them on a diet that was 90% seagrass and only 10% squid. After the sharks were given three "vegetarian" meals a day for three weeks, it turned out that they all gained weight. What's more, the study found that more than 50% of the algae were eventually digested successfully: it was previously thought that creatures with short guts, like the shovel shark and its relatives, simply could not absorb fibrous food.

Scientists believe that it's all about the colonies of symbiont bacteria, which, like you and me, live in the intestines of sharks and help them better absorb plant foods.

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