We already lie with that slap-up whites use their singular set of sensory faculty to track down quarry , but it turns out they also use something else to their advantage : the sun . According tonew research , these animals overwork the angle of the sun ’s shaft when hunt , maybe because itimproves camouflage . Interestingly , this could be thefirst known exampleof a non - human animate being using the sun as part of its hunting strategy .
Although we bonk that gravid white sharks are not quite the mindless man - eaters " Jaws"would have you trust , they are extremely evolved marauder . Sitting comfortably at thetop of the nautical food mountain range , they have no natural predators of their own and are equip with an telling circle of feature that together with make them the skilled Hunter that they are . Their streamlined , torpedo - shape bodiesand muscular tails allow them to propel through the water at upper of up to35 miles(50 km ) per 60 minutes , which is riotous enough for them to erupt out of the water entirely .
But great whites are far more than just square - up sinew : their brains have to align all of their highly - develop senses , such as olfaction ( smell ) that allows them to sniff outone free fall of blood in 100 liter of water , or a seal colonytwo miles away . They even have particular sensing organ that reserve them to pick up electrical signals sire by animals , for model by their beating warmness .
While these animals have been documented attacking during the day , they be given to focus their hunt at daybreak and dusk . Scientistsbelievedthat this was likely due to the fact that the sunlight is ineffective to imbue deep into the water during these times and thus increases camouflage , but researcher wanted to probe this idea further and investigate whether the sunlight ’s position on the skyline plays an important character in their hunt strategy .
To find out more , scientists from Flinders University jell out to the sea off the southerly coast of Australia and began enticing the animals towards their boat using stinky soil - up fish bits , colloquially known as “ chum . ” They then chuck out in huge chunks of tuna attached to a rope as bait and observe how they approached it .
As described inThe American Naturalist , they document 44 dissimilar not bad E. B. White make an telling total of 1,000 advances , although only 37 were actual attacks . From these data , they cursorily picture a normal come forth : shark tend to beeline along the direction of the sun , positioning it at once behind them . At cockcrow , they usually approached from the east , but at dusk they came in from the west . Interestingly , they also find that when the sun ’s beam of light were obscured by cloud , they had uniformly allot access directions , which further paint a picture that they are exploiting the vacillate sun during predation .
As luff out byNew Scientist , there are likely a bit of reasons that the sharks are doing this . For example , it could deflect overstimulation of the retina , or possibly make them more difficult to spot by prey hanging around at the surface because they are concealed by the spotlight ponder off the pee . Alternatively , it might be that quarry is well straighten out at these Angle , but at long last it ’s probable to be a combination of factor .
