The universal image of a shark tends to be – rightly or wrongly – one of a fierce predator chowing down on hunks of crashing essence . While for most shark species this wildcat report holds largely untrue , some young shark off the sea-coast of Florida are on the face of it taking things one stride further and fill up their stomachswith seagrass or else .
Presenting their work at theSociety for Integrative and Comparative Biologymeeting this week , researchers have compelling evidence that young bonnethead sharks in the coastal waters off the southern United States are wipe out and digesting seagrass , make them the creation ’s only roll in the hay omnivorous shark .
But testing whether or not the little sharks are actually digesting seagrass in the state of nature is a little guileful , to say the least . To compass this , the researchers beguile a few untried shovelhead shark from the seagrass meadows in the Florida Keys and took them to their facility at Florida International University ’s labs .
While here , they launch the unseasoned shark a industrial plant - heavy dieting , consisting of 90 percent seagrass and 10 percent squid . During this time , the squad analyze the poop from the shark and found to their surprise that the beast were able-bodied to digest an impressive 58.6 percent of the plant matter that they consumed , lay them on par with young sea polo-neck who spend their full lives chowing down on the seagrass .
What is n’t certain at the second is whether or not these unseasoned shark are slurping up the sens on design or whether it is happening by fortuity as they learn the ropes of how to be a successful predator . For instance , they may be accidentally scooping up the plant as they direct a morsel of fish . This hypothesis is backed up somewhat by the fact that the amount of seagrass found in the shark ' stomachsdecreases as they mature , suggest that as they perfect their hunting skills , they consume less plant matter .
Either way , this does n’t take off from the fact that the youthful shark are still digesting it , even though as predators they do n’t normally have the enzyme necessary to go bad down the tough cellulose found in the cell wall of seagrass .
so as to be considered a genuine omnivore , the sharks need to be getting some nutritional value from the grass , and it seems that is incisively what they are doing . The researchers think it likely that the brute have a specific microbiome in their gut that , a bit like you and me , allows them to break the grass down . This is shown by the fact that carbon paper isotope find in the seagrass can also be observe in the blood of the immature sharks .
irrespective of whether or not these sharks are doing it on purpose , they seem to have turned eating smoke to their advantage , making them truly the earth ’s first known omnivorous shark .
