'Naked' Shark was Born Without Skin or Teeth in World First
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:
'Naked' shark was born without skin or teeth in world first:
While scientists have reported numerous cases of albinism, discoloration and other genetic skin mutations in sharks before, this rare catch is the first and only known case of a shark living with a "severe lack of all skin-related structures [including] teeth," according to a study published July 16 in theJournal of Fish Biology.
Perhaps stranger still, the abnormal shark seemed to be living a relatively normal life until it was scooped from the sea, lead study author Antonello Mulas said. When he and his colleagues examined the shark, they found that it was about 3 years old, had grown at a typical rate, and had a belly full of food when it died.
[...] "Our first reaction was, 'A shark without skin can't survive,'" Mulas, a biologist at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, told Live Science. "But, as Shakespeare said, there are more things in heaven and Earth than you can imagine."
G. melastomus are common, small catsharks that can grow to a maximum length of 2.3 feet (70 centimeters) - about the size of a child's baseball bat. They are prevalent in the northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, where they tend to swim at depths of 650 to 1,600 feet (200 to 500 meters). True to its name, the interior of the blackmouth's maw is jet-black, as is the skin-like sheath that covers its internal organs.
Journal Reference:
Antonello Mulas, Andrea Bellodi, Cristina Porcu, et al. Living naked: first case of lack of skinrelated structures in an elasmobranch, the blackmouth catshark (Galeus melastomus), Journal of Fish Biology (DOI: 10.1111/jfb.14468)
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