Side of seagrass please: Scientists find gluttonous shark

Ruining a repute of sharks as barbarous predators, California researchers pronounced they have found a shark that enjoys a side of seagrass with a prey.

Bonnethead sharks not usually eat weed while chomping fish and squid — they also digest a plant and benefit nourishment from it, scientists during a University of California, Irvine announced Wednesday. The investigate was published in Proceedings of a Royal Society B.

It turns out bonnetheads have high levels of enzymes that mangle down twine and carbohydrates, compared with a low volume carnivores typically have. That creates a bonnethead a initial famous gluttonous shark, researchers said.

Laboratory video posted online shows a tiny bonnethead ravenous a dish of 90 per cent seagrass and 10 per cent squid.

It was formerly believed that bonnetheads unintentionally consumed a weed in shoal areas where a class lives along some coastlines in a U.S., Central and South America.

The smallest of a 10 hammerhead species, bonnetheads are typically about 0.6 to 0.9 metres (2 to 3 feet) long.

Samantha Leigh, who headed a four-year investigate during UCI’s School of Biological Sciences, pronounced she hopes a find will assistance strengthen seagrass ecosystems that are during risk from meridian change.

“The fact a rarely abounding kind of shark feeds on a grasses is nonetheless another denote of because we need to safety this vegetation,” she said.

In this Sept. 2016, print supposing by a University of California Irvine, UC Irvine grad student, Samantha Leigh handles a bonnethead shark in Irvine, Calif. Leigh, who headed a four-year investigate during UCI’s School of Biological Sciences, pronounced she hopes a find will assistance strengthen seagrass ecosystems that are during risk from meridian change. (Yannis P. Papstamatiou/University of California Irvine around Associated Press)

Sandy Trautwein of a Aquarium of a Pacific in Long Beach called a commentary “unique, though not surprising, given bonnetheads’ niche in pleasant ecosystems.”

She pronounced she hopes a investigate “opens adult a doorway for additional research” about seagrass communities and sharks in general.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bonnethead-shark-seagrass-1.4814092?cmp=rss