02

Jun

Do you know what sea creatures great white sharks are afraid of?

There will be movies of sharks running around.

If the movie were scientifically accurate, Jaws would be like this.

The famous theme song began to play, and the black back Biller grunted back and forth on the water. After the great white shark escaped under the drive of terror, the camera captured the real threat-the figure of the orca.

Great white sharks and orcas both appear in the same area, prey on the same prey, and are animals at the top of the food chain. However, according to the latest paper published on Scientific Reports, even if the killer whales only appear for a short time, the giant great white sharks will quickly retreat and will not return for a long time.

ホオジロザメが恐れる海の生き物って何か知ってる?

Great white sharks and orcas compete with each other from autumn to early winter in coastal areas, especially in order to hunt seals in the active waters of the North Pacific. There is not much research on the direct contact of these predators, but as previously reported, orcas may attack sharks and feed on nutritious livers. Because there is more to the relationship between species than being eaten, the researchers decided to investigate the relationship between creatures in the same sea area.

Which is stronger, shark or orca?

From 2006 to 2013, researchers lured great white sharks "seal carp made from external carpets" to their boats in three locations off the coast of California (southeast Fallon Island, Tomares Point and Anne Yonuebo Island), and 165 heads were labeled with electronic tags. After that, we collected data from various monitoring surveys of sharks, orcas and elephant seals from the southeastern island of Fallon. Their analysis shows that the closer orcas get to the island, the fewer seals are killed by sharks.

There are many examples of sharks being frightened by orcas. On November 2, 2009, there were 17 sharks in the sea near the island. The orca stayed for only two and a half hours without killing a tagged shark, but during the season, since then, it has no longer detected most sharks. Similar collective shark escapes occurred in 2011 and 2013.

Although the study relies on estimates of survey data, great white sharks hunted near Fallon Island in the south-east show that they are afraid of orcas. This is because the paper shows a subtle relationship with species that can have more impact than fear of shark drive, that is, if there are fewer sharks around, elephants and seals will increase, which is important for the number of individuals.

From this study, sharks are not as scary as orcas. On this basis, how about a remake of Jaws and Free Willie?

Source:Nature