Whale sharks are the biggest shark species in the world, and now scientists have found that the giant sharks are even more prodigious eating machines than previously thought. In addition to gulping down enormous mouthfuls of krill — tiny shrimplike crustaceans — whale sharks also swallow huge helpings of seaweed, enabling the aquatic giants to officially dethrone Kodiak bears as the world's largest omnivores.
But the new discovery, published July 19 in the journal Ecology, has given scientists important new information to chew on."This causes us to rethink everything we thought we knew about what whale sharks eat" and calls into question other aspects of the sharks' behavior"out in the open ocean," lead study author Mark Meekan, a fish biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Queensland, said in a statement.
"Turns out that maybe the system of evolution on land and in the water isn't that different after all," Meekan said. The scientists think this omnivorous diet could be a result of the sharks evolving to digest accidentally swallowed seaweed, saving them the energy cost of spitting it back out.
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