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.
Researchers from the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and Deakin University fitted an adult male shark with a pop-up satellite tag and tracked it for more than five months.
After being tagged, the shark swam more than 20km out to sea, then headed north to Queensland.
It roamed between 80 and 280km offshore between Agnes Water and the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, before heading to the cooler waters in southern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.
The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act represents a multiyear effort by lawmakers, under pressure from animal-rights and ecological organizations such as the Animal Welfare Institute and Oceana, to ban the trade of shark fins.
Seventeen states and three U.S. territories have banned or restricted the intrastate sale of shark fins, but instituting a federal framework is critical as fins imported and sold in the U.S. can come from endangered or threatened shark species, or from sharks that were finned.
Marine scientists have invented a small device that can reduce shark bycatch numbers by emitting short electrical pulses as a deterrent.
When clipped on the fishing line next to a baited hook, the battery-operated SharkGuard works by emitting a short localised pulse every two seconds. This causes the shark’s ampullae of Lorenzini (electrical sensors around its nose and mouth) to be overstimulated, thus prompting it to swim away.
That feeding or attracting wildlife with food to enable better viewing opportunities by ecotourists (i.e. provisioning tourism) has the potential to alter the natural behaviour and physiology of animals has long been well established.
But how the physiological state of wildlife might be related to the nature and magnitude of these effects remains poorly understood.
The186-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has voted for the first time to regulate the trade that kills millions of sharks every year.
Imagine you are riding the waters on your trusty surfboard, savouring the rush of emotions and feeling totally alive, when you glance down into the waters and you spot a shark swimming by.
Does your heart skip a beat and you immediately look for the fastest way to get back to dry land?
Or do you continue what you are doing, feeling more at one with the elements?
Well, if you are like more than 50 percent of surfers, you would simply continue surfing, according to a survey of 391 surfers, conducted by the University of South Australia.
Scientists have observed instances in which tuna rub themselves against the side of sharks. Apparently, they do this to dislodge painful parasites that cling to their head, eyes and gills.
“Shark skin is really smooth in one direction and it’s like sandpaper in the other,” said Chris Thompson, a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia.
In Ireland, new regulations giving the basking shark the "protected wild animal" status under the Wildlife Act came into effect on 9 October. The order was signed by Minister of State for Heritage Malcolm Noonan, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue. This legislation was heavily supported by the Irish Basking Shark Group (ISBG), an international network of researchers, educators, and community representatives founded in 2009.
For several years, scientists have suspected that orcas have been killing and eating parts of great white sharks. Now, they have video evidence to prove it.
New drone and helicopter footage show a pod of orcas ruthlessly pursuing a great white shark in Mossel Bay, South Africa for more than an hour before going in for the kill. The video culminates with one of the killer whales gobbling up a large chunk of the shark's liver.
Australian marine scientists have discovered that the massive whale shark also eats plants, making it officially the largest omnivore on Earth.
As the evolution of a very large body size requires a ubiquitous and abundant source of food, the consumption of plants could present an energetic challenge for these animals unless some components can be digested.
