How Do Constantly Swimming Sharks Ever Rest? Scientists Just Figured It Out
upstart writes:
How Do Constantly Swimming Sharks Ever Rest? Scientists Just Figured It Out:
Marine biologists have discovered that sharks 'surf' ocean currents in a conveyor belt configuration, allowing them to take turns resting.
[...] These sharks never stop swimming for their entire lives. They need to keep moving in order to extract enough oxygen with their gills to keep them alive, so stationary resting, like the way other animals rest, is out of the question.
Exactly how sharks rest was a bit of a puzzle, until on a dive during the day, Papastamatiou noticed that the sharks were swimming against the updraft current in a certain channel. Even more interestingly, they were remarkably still, barely moving their fins or tails.
[...] As they crept forward to the front of the channel, the lead sharks would slip backwards, letting the current carry them back to the starting position. It was like some sort of strange conveyor belt - the sharks would inch forward against the current, be carried back, then inch forward again.
Journal Reference:
Yannis P. Papastamatiou, Gil Iosilevskii, Valentina Di Santo, et al. Sharks surf the slope: Current updrafts reduce energy expenditure for aggregating marine predators, Journal of Animal Ecology (DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.13536)
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