{"id":41344,"date":"2024-09-03T06:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T04:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/353ede99-23a4-4274-b061-3512d71c076a"},"modified":"2024-09-03T06:27:29","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T04:27:29","slug":"this-enormous-shark-was-swallowed-by-an-even-bigger-shark-and-a-lost-tracking-device-reveals-exactly-what-happened","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/rss_feed\/this-enormous-shark-was-swallowed-by-an-even-bigger-shark-and-a-lost-tracking-device-reveals-exactly-what-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"This enormous shark was swallowed by an even bigger shark \u2013 and a lost tracking device reveals exactly what happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a scientific first, researchers have discovered that a pregnant porbeagle was eaten by another shark. <\/p>

By Melissa Hobson\n <\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 03 September 2024 at 04:15 AM<\/p>

\n\n

Large sharks might be eating each other, scientists discovered when something strange happened to a huge porbeagle shark they had tagged.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>

Researchers were puzzled when they received strange data back from a 2.2-metre pregnant\u00a0porbeagle shark<\/a> (Lamna nasus<\/em>) they had tagged. The clues led them to believe that the enormous shark was eaten by something even bigger \u2013 this is the first time scientists have recorded a porbeagle being eaten by an even larger predator. Their findings are published in\u00a0Frontiers in Marine Science<\/em><\/a>.<\/u><\/em><\/p>

\u201cThis is the first documented predation event of a porbeagle shark anywhere in the world,\u201d says lead author\u00a0Brooke Anderson<\/a>, a former graduate student at Arizona State University.<\/p>

Porbeagles are large sharks that can grow 3.7 metres long and weigh 230kg, making the predation of the pregnant female particularly puzzling to the researchers. Credit: Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Porbeagles, which can grow up to 3.7 metres long, live in the Atlantic and South Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean. <\/p>

One mother-to-be was tagged as part of a research project looking into the movements of the species in the waters off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. By telling them where she went while pregnant, the researchers hoped the tags would help them learn which habitats are important for pregnant females and newborn pups.\u00a0<\/p>

The sharks were given two types of satellite tags \u2013 one would transmit their location to satellites every time the shark\u2019s fin was above the water. The other would only send back the data after a set period when the tag was programmed to fall off.<\/p>

So, the scientists were surprised when the second tag started transmitting early, meaning it had released and was floating at the surface. The data showed that the shark had spent five months swimming at depths of between 600\u2013800 metres during the daytime and 100\u2013200 metres at night in waters ranging from 6.4 to 23.5 \u00b0C.<\/p>

Watch: the moment the researchers released the tagged Porbeagle shark. Credit. James Sulikowski<\/figcaption><\/figure>