Foraging Strategies – Science Sushi

le there's no I in TEAM, each penguin benefits from hunting together. Photo credit Sergey Uryadnikov — While there’s no I in TEAM, each penguin benefits from hunting together. Photo credit Sergey Uryadnikov

They say that many hands make light work. Well, for African penguins, many beaks make for bountiful hunts, according to a new study in Royal Society Open Science. The results suggest that dwindling populations may have greater consequences than previously realized.

African penguins (Spheniscus demersus), or “jackass” penguins after their donkey-like calls, are currently endangered. Found only on the southern tip of Africa, populations of these flightless birds have dropped from an estimated 4 to 5 million in 1800 to a mere 50,000 or so animals today. Their situation is considered so dire that, if the penguins do not begin to rebound soon, it’s predicted they’ll go extinct in about a decade. Continue reading “Birds of a Feather Hunt Better Together”

Anyone who has been on the receiving end of a truly hard slap knows just how jarring forceful impacts can be. In the animals world, slapping can be used to disorient and stun prey, making them easy pickings for an intelligent predator. Creating a slap with such force can be tough, though, especially in a liquid environment. Killer whales can do it. But while scientists have long hypothesized that thresher sharks might use tail-slapping to stun prey, none had actually studied the kinematics of their tail-waiving behavior to determine if these sharks actually slap or just herd fish with their tails like dolphins do.

7123834807_df1dd63657_h — The impressively long tail of a thresher shark.
Photo by Flickr user Raven_Denmark

Thresher sharks are found worldwide, and are known for their particularly stunning rears. The tails of these sharks can represent an impressive 50% their total length! A fact which is even more daunting when you consider that the common thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus) can grow up to 20 feet long and weigh in at over 1,000 pounds. But these giant ocean predators don’t tend to hang around our shores; lucky for us, they prefer the open ocean where they travel long distances to feed on schools of fish. Continue reading “Fish-Slapped! Thresher Sharks Stun Sardines With Speedy Tails”