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White sharks exploit the sun during predatory approaches

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-04-01, 00:00 authored by C Huveneers, D Holman, R Robbins, A Fox, John EndlerJohn Endler, A H Taylor
There is no conclusive evidence of any nonhuman animal using the sun as part of its predation strategy. Here, we show that the world's largest predatory fish-the white shark (Carcharodon carcharias)-exploits the sun when approaching baits by positioning the sun directly behind them. On sunny days, sharks reversed their direction of approach along an east-west axis from morning to afternoon but had uniformly distributed approach directions during overcast conditions. These results show that white sharks have sufficient behavioral flexibility to exploit fluctuating environmental features when predating. This sun-tracking predation strategy has a number of potential functional roles, including improvement of prey detection, avoidance of retinal overstimulation, and predator concealment.

History

Journal

American Naturalist

Volume

185

Issue

4

Pagination

562 - 570

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Location

Chicago, Ill.

ISSN

1537-5323

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2015, University of Chicago Press