Shark eats Shark Whole
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/17/candid-camera-shark-gulps-another-shark-whole/
The
photo says it all: an alien-looking shark, adorned with mossy hairs and
a flat face, with its mouth agape and a slender bamboo shark headfirst
inside. Though not unusual for a shark to snack on another shark, it's
not typical behavior — and it's certainly not common for humans to catch
the action firsthand.
In fact, the researchers who came upon the shark-eat-shark scene on the fringes of Great Keppel Island on the southernGreat Barrier Reefdidn't realize at first what they were looking at.
"The
white bamboo shark appeared first, and as we came closer, we suddenly
realized that its head was not hidden under a ledge, as is usual, but in
the mouth of the very well-camouflaged wobbegong," Daniela Ceccarelli
of Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence (ARC) forCoralReefStudies, told LiveScience, adding that "witnessing predation events like this is very rare."
Ceccarelli and David Williams, also of ARC, were conducting a fish census there on Aug. 1, 2011, when they spotted the sharks.
The eater in this party was a tasselled wobbegong shark (Eucrossorhinus dasypogon) more than 4 feet long (1.3 meter); the wobbegong's prey was a 3.2-foot-long (1 m) brown-banded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum). Like other wobbegongspecies, this one isan ambush predator, lying in wait on the seabed and then attacking prey at high speed.
"It's not unusual for them to prey on other sharks, especiallysmall sharkssuch as the bamboo shark, as they forage for invertebrates on the seabed," Ceccarelli said.
They
watched the sharks for about 30 minutes, with neither shark moving
during that stint. The wobbegong didn't further ingest the bamboo shark,
the researchers note in a brief article published online Feb. 4 in the
journal Coral Reefs.
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