The Legendary Great White Sharks are the largest predatory fish on the earth. They are found both close inshore and well offshore over the deep oceans but they are particularly in warm temperate seas. These ferocious predators hunt a wide range of animals. They tend to attack from below, taking a large bit of their prey and waiting for its victim to weaken from loss of blood.
So now the question is, ‘What makes it such a fearsome predator?’ Let’s check this out….
Senses
The Great White is equipped with two of the most powerful sensing mechanisms in nature, a highly developed sense of ‘smell’ and the ability to sense the electrical fields radiating from living creatures. They can smell a drop of blood in 100 litres of water and like all other sharks, the Whites have ‘sixth sense’ too which is the Ampullae of Lorenzin. This enables them to detect the electomagnetic field emitted by the movement of living animals. Every time a living creature moves it generates an electrical field and great whites are so sensitive they can detect half a billionth of a volt. Indeed these two sensory packages have aided the hunting of weaker preys for the Great Whites.
Dr. John McCosker and Richard Ellis point out in their book 'The Great White Shark' that these ampullae collectively give the GW the ability to sense the electrical field distributed by a copper wire 1000 miles long hooked up to a D-sized battery!
Hunting Technique
Great white sharks' reputation as ferocious predators is well-earned. They typically hunt using an "ambush" technique, taking their prey by surprise from below. When the White sees its prey swimming above, the enormous force of the impact can lift even a big shark clean out of the water. These breaching attacks are one of the most spectacular sights in nature.
Near the Seal Island in South Africa's False Bay, studies have shown that the shark attacks most often occur in the morning, within 2 hours after sunrise. The reason for this is that its preys are hard to notice a shark close to the bottom at this time. The success rate of attacks is 55% in the first 2 hours, it falls to 40% in late morning and after that the sharks stop hunting.
Diet
The Great Whites hunt fish including other sharks, sea lions, seals, sea-birds, small whales, turtles, porpoises and carrion. One interesting point to note is that humans do not make up any part of a White Shark’s diet. This is because the human body is too bony and we are not fat enough for them!
In fact, in most of the harmful encounters that Whites have had with humans, the shark was never really attacking the victim. They are just merely carrying out a ‘test bite’. This is when a White will mouth a strange object in the water to taste it and see if it is edible. How curious are they, isn’t it?
Therefore, one important message I want to bring across, let’s not have shark fin’s soup anymore since we are not one of the items under the Great White Shark’s menu. Let’s save this endangered species. J
References:
-
-
-
-
-
-