12-foot shark bitten multiple times, leaving scars and chunk missing from its tail
Something tore into a 12-foot shark off the East Coast, taking part of a fin and leaving teeth marks around its hulking body, according to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.
Photos of the battered shark (named Chex) were shared Saturday on Facebook, showing the most striking of its “battle scars” was a missing top lobe from its thick tail (caudal) fin.
“We do not know how this happened, but our science team can hypothesize that the (tail) injury could have been caused by a boat strike or an interaction with another shark. If you look around Chex’s gill slits, you can see the scar of a bite from another shark,” the conservancy wrote.
“Unfortunately, we do not know why another shark would bite Chex. It is rare to record interactions between these animals.”
OCEARCH, another shark research agency, has speculated that male great white sharks may bite each other in the North Atlantic while competing for females in mating season, or the females themselves bite males to ward off unwanted sexual advances.
It sounds vicious, but sharks “have a rapid capacity to heal,” OCEARCH officials told McClatchy News last year.
“Our research team has come across many examples of how resilient and tough white sharks are. White shark Chex is a perfect example of that resiliency,” the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy concluded.
Great white sharks grow to “an average” of 15-to-20 feet in length and 2.5 tons, and are considered “the largest predatory fish on Earth,” according to National Geographic.
“Highly adapted predators, their mouths are lined with up to 300 serrated, triangular teeth arranged in several rows, and they have an exceptional sense of smell to detect prey,” National Geographic reports. “They even have organs that can sense the tiny electromagnetic fields generated by animals.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 9:41 AM with the headline "12-foot shark bitten multiple times, leaving scars and chunk missing from its tail."