In May 2017, on a beach in South Africa, seven corpses of great white sharks were found one after another, and to the surprise of scientists, the internal organs of these great white sharks were all missing.
As a large and fierce shark, the great white shark has the nickname of the man-eating shark, has more than 300 teeth, very powerful, and the dead great white sharks are between 3.2-4.5 meters in length and weigh more than 1000 kilograms, who can kill so many great white sharks frequently in a month? And only take its internal organs?
Shark experts first thought of poachers, after all, the liver of the great white shark is rich in nutrients, and many fishermen in the last century killed the great white shark in order to use its liver to refine cod liver oil.
But if it is a poacher, there are many doubts that cannot be solved, such as why there is only a very neat wound on the body of the great white shark. When poachers hunt great white sharks, they can't hurt great white sharks at all, right?
Moreover, the fins of the great white shark are the best raw materials for shark fin soup, how can poachers who covet profit be indifferent?
The team of shark biologist Alison Tonna, who was in charge of examining the carcasses of the great white shark at the time, said they were puzzled, but it didn't take long for them to solve the case and discover that it was actually killer whales that killed the great white sharks and ate their offal.
Although there was no evidence of killer whale sightings killing great white sharks at the time, near the waters of Falls Bay in South Africa, Alison and killer whale expert Viser found two particular killer whales wandering.
It was two male killer whales, one with its dorsal fin curved to the left and the other collapsing to the right, so locals call them starboard and starboard. These two killer whales actually appeared in Falls Bay in 2015 and have been active in the waters of southern Africa since then, and they are the biggest suspects in the killing of great white sharks, because they do have a record of killing great white sharks.
Biologists have found that the great white sharks they kill will be directly torn apart, and only the liver will be eaten.
And since the starboard and starboard spots, great white shark sightings in the area have begun to decline dramatically, with 3-8 recorded jaws detected a day before, but after a few months that number became zero.
Scientists looked at the location of the flagged sharks through the transmitter and found that in the days after the great white shark was attacked, a few great white sharks even ran hundreds of kilometers away, and some even left the sea and returned half a year later.
Why don't these great white sharks want to stay in this area?
The researchers found that while official data currently records that eight great white sharks were killed on the starboard and starboard sides, there are certainly many unseen carcasses of great white sharks, and their brutal slaughter is likely one of the reasons why great white sharks were forced to migrate (and also human overfishing of other fish, as well as environmental changes).
So why do killer whales have to eat the liver of great white sharks? The great white shark is so big that other meat and shark fins are not eaten, isn't it too wasteful?
That's because a great white shark's liver can make up almost a third of the body, and 90% of the liver is high-energy lipids, that is, an adult great white shark's liver can contain 20 million calories of energy, which is a meal that killer whales like very much.
Secondly, sharks rely on skin to urinate, so the taste of skin and flesh is not so delicious (which is why fishermen used to throw sharks back into the sea after catching sharks, cutting shark fins), and killer whales are picky eaters in addition to the name, such as after killing gray whales, it only eats the tongue of gray whales.
On May 2, 1992, a group of at least 17 killer whales attacked a mother and child of gray whales in Monterey Bay, California, and after a six-hour chase and harassment, killed the baby gray whale and ate its tongue weighing nearly half a ton.
So how did the killer whale manage to remove all the livers by just making a cut in the great white shark?
Don't forget, killer whales are very intelligent animals, and they know that sharks have a weakness, that is, when the shark's belly is facing upwards, their entire body becomes stiff, unable to move, and enters a "tonic paralysis state".
Therefore, when the starboard and starboard side hunt the great white shark, they will rush backwards from above and below the great white shark respectively, stirring the water flow and making the great white shark lose its balance, so that the body of the great white shark is flipped over, so that it cannot move, and the killer whale can quickly bite out a neat opening under the great white shark's pectoral fin, and then suck out the liver.
The cleverness of the killer whale also makes it run around in the ocean, which can be said to be a well-deserved "underwater street slipper". #I'm going to make micro-headlines ##Animal##Killer Whale# #鲨鱼 #
