A group of Australian researchers from James Cook University were having a fairly “normal” day, as they described it, until a tiger shark they caught vomited up an entire dead echidna.
He added that given the condition of the small spiny mammal’s body, with no signs of digestion, the animal was ingested “only an hour or two” before the event. To the British newspaper Watchman Nicholas Lubitz, a former doctoral student who was part of the group of researchers who discovered the unusual incident in Australian waters.
“My theory is that the echidna was swimming from one island to another [através de um canal estreito]”Maybe he was looking for food or friends, and unfortunately for him, he was caught by a large tiger shark,” she told the newspaper.
The incident occurred in May 2022, when scientists were conducting a tagging and tracking study of marine life off the coast of Urbihus Island, in North Queensland, between Townsville and Lucinda. After tagging hundreds of animals, scientists were “stunned” when the echidna tiger shark vomited, likely “in response to the stress” of being caught and tagged, Lubitz said. The researcher believes that otherwise the shark would have digested the animal (including the spines).
“A large tiger shark would almost certainly swallow the echidna whole,” the researcher explained. Watchman. that it Classify Sharks have serrated teeth, and chew their prey or swallow it whole, depending on its size.
The researcher stated that the tiger shark is an “opportunistic predator” that feeds mainly in shallow waters and “eats anything it can control or considers nutritious.” As part of his doctoral dissertation, Lubitz was tracking the movement and behavior of large sharks around the coast, looking for links between food availability and… Climate change.
Previously, the team of scientists had already caught a different tiger shark, which also regurgitated its food: some fat and a completely intact vertebra, a sign that the animal had recently fed on a dugong cub. Although tiger sharks are known to hunt dugongs, they “don’t regurgitate their food very often,” the researcher said.
Tiger sharks are known to feed on human waste, but the echidna incident appears to be a one-off. “I would be very surprised if this was recorded before,” Lubitz said. “I don’t think it is very common for sharks to feed on echidnas.”
Tiger sharks can reach six meters in length, and are responsible for the second largest number of recorded attacks on humans, after the great white shark, according to a report published by the British newspaper “Daily Mail”. guardian. These animals have dark vertical stripes on their sides and back.
The text was edited by Claudia Carvalho Silva
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