Shocked researchers are trying to figure out what kind of apex predator took out an 8-foot-shark as it wandered through the oceans — and they think it might have been another, bigger shark.
Scientists from three states had been tracking the pregnant porbeagle shark for five months and hundreds of miles as it traveled from New England to Bermuda — until one of the tags they’d affixed to it suddenly began transmitting higher-than-normal temperature readings, according to the USA Today.
“We knew that something happened,” James Sulikowski, director of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station at Oregon State University, told the outlet.
Eventually, researchers figured out that the temperature spikes — which happened while the shark was still deep in the cold ocean — meant that some other animal had eaten their subject, according to a study published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
“We knew that the tag was inside a warm-blooded creature,” Sulikowski said. “And we knew that it wasn’t a whale or mammal, because mammals are much warmer than that.”
The scientists — who hail from Oregon State University, Arizona State University and the Atlantic Shark Institute in Rhode Island — think one of the creature’s own brethren is to blame.
“My guess is probably a mako or a white shark because they do get larger than a porbeagle,” Sulikowski said.
Those two ocean predators — along with the porbeagles — have internal body temperatures of between 77 and 80 degrees Farenheit.
That’s exactly what the tag’s temp readings spiked to when their subject died.
Sulikowski said the unusual shark-on-shark feast shows how little people know about the oceans.
“It makes us want to study more and learn more about how susceptible other large sharks are to be eaten and who is the top dog out there.”
