So I asked leading shark ethologist and behaviourist, Professor Samuel 'doc' Gruber to elaborate. After pointing out how much pain women feel when they give birth, making the point that suffering has no effect on reproduction, he reminded me that sharks evolved their mating behaviours and the physical structures involved, separately from other animals.
Just their name, their size, and their menacing looks can evoke feelings of terror, fear and instinctive rejection. However, if you have the privilege to be able to dive with big tiger sharks, as I have, you might fall in love with them, at least you will bond with them in a mysterious way.
Have you always wanted to dive with sharks? Hug a dolphin? Explore shipwrecks, caves and colorful coral reefs? What if you wanted to have all of these adventures wrapped into one destination? Then, it is time to visit the Caribbean island of Grand Bahama.
Valerie Taylor, along with her husband Ron, are two of the true pioneers of underwater photo and video, since their debut in the 1960s.
Researchers in Australia have discovered a secret weakness of one of the ocean's most impressive predators.
The scientists, who examined the retinas of 17 different species of shark, discovered that the creatures had only one type of colour-sensitive cell, known as a cone cell, in their eyes.
A study by Simon Oliver at the School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University describes the first observations of thresher sharks venturing into shallow coastal waters to interact with cleaner wrasse, a type of small fish that groom other fish species.
Thresher sharks live in the open oceans and much of the knowledge of them to date is based on fisheries bycatch. This study just published in published in PLoS ONE, (14 March 2011) examined the behaviour of these elusive sharks as they invite cleaners to remove parasites and dead tissue.
House Bill (HB) 2838 was introduced to the Oregon State Legislature on 11 January 2011 by Representative Brad Witt (D-Clatskanie) to prohibit the possession, sale, trade, and distribution of shark fins in Oregon. Western ports such as those in Oregon and California are major entry points for shark fin distribution in the United States.
It has been widely known that sharks have a special sensory organ on their heads, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, which enable them to detect the very weak electrical fields that prey emit when they swim or bleed.
But now scientists have found that a gel-like substance plays a big role in this process known as electroreception, explaining why sharks pursue bloody victims, even when other easy target´s prey is around, and the gushing blood obscures the shark´s vision and smell.
As many as 400 megalodon teeth were found at the sites, giving rise to this theory. The size of most of the teeth, about 0.6 to 2.8 inches, suggests that the majority had come from juveniles and embryonic sharks.
Juvenile teeth are different from the small teeth from adults or the dwarf species of the megalodon. In all, it is estimated that the teeth came from 21 juvenile megalodons and seven adults, possibly the mother sharks.
AB 376 was authored by Assemblymembers Paul Fong (D-Cupertino) and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael). AB 376 passed the Assembly by a vote of 65 to 8 on May 23rd and the Senate on September 6th with a vote of 25 to 9. Both of the votes were bipartisan. We thank Assemblymen Fong and Huffman for fighting so long and hard for this bill.
Dr Jonathan Cox from the University’s Department of Chemistry has been working with researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in London, testing a scale model of a hammerhead shark in a flow tank to see how the water flows around the nasal cavity of its strange flattened head.
