14 DAY TRIAL // One can only assume it's pretty difficult to sink your teeth into a fish while the latter keeps moving around and fidgeting. Thresher sharks have found one very simple solution to this problem: they use their tail to stun their prey before moving in for the kill.
Wildlife researchers explain that, in the case of this species of marine predators, the tail makes up about half of the animal's entire body length.
Specialists have long suspected that this abnormally long tail serves some other purpose than just help the animal move about.
However, it took a while before they managed to figure out what that purpose was, seeing how thresher sharks are incredibly shy and are mainly active during nighttime.
A new study in the July 10 issue of the journal PLOS ONE details how, with the help of underwater footage, specialists were able to determine how it is that their Tails help these sharks secure their next meal.
Nature reports that, when coming face to face with a school of fish, thresher sharks approach it and lunge at it.
The predators then whip their tails, thus creating a shock wave that stuns the fish and makes it easier for the sharks to feed on them.
Specialists say that it takes just one-third of a second for a thresher shark to describe an arc of 180 degrees with its tail, and that the energy released in this manner can knock out up to seven sardines at a time.
“It seems reasonable to think that the hugely elongated tail of the threshers evolved to help the sharks hunt in this fashion,” oceanographer Nigel Hussey believes.
Wildlife researchers suspect that the thresher shark's feeding behavior is an indicator of the fact that this species is much more intelligent than previously assumed, and that whales and dolphins are not the only marine creature able to piece together and make use of efficient hunting strategies.
“Definitely this work shows that sharks have enough intelligence to work out a relatively sophisticated and effective hunting strategy,” Nigel Hussey explains.