BONNETHEAD IS AN OMNIVORE SHARK, RESEARCHERS FOUND
What an animal consumes and what an animal digests and assimilates for energetic demands are not always synonymous. Sharks, accepted as carnivores, have guts that are presumed to be well suited for a high-protein diet. However, the bonnethead shark (Sphyrna tiburo), an abundant shark commonly found in seagrass habitats, has been previously shown to consume copious amounts of seagrass, flowering marine plant that forms subsea meadows in some coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, as in other parts of the world. And now, is considered the first known plant-eating shark. The finding were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.
The bonnethead shark is an abundant shark species in shallow waters of the Eastern Pacific, the Western Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico, where they feed on seagrass and small crustaceans, snails and other fishes, and according to researchers, in natural conditions, up to 62.1% of gut content mass is seagrass. Because a large percentage of the diet is seagrass, conserving seagrass beds is vital to the hammerhead shark family and other marine life.
Photo: bonnethead shark in Bahia State, Brazil, by José Amorim Reis-Filho.
Reference (Open Access): Leigh et al., 2018. Seagrass digestion by a notorious ‘carnivore’. Proc. R. Soc. B.
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