Canada Journal – News of the World Articles and videos to bring you the biggest Canadian news stories from across the country every day
Sharks may be many things in the popular imagination, but they are not generally noted for their sociability.
But that could be about to change after new research has found that sharks possess distinct “social personalities” and that most, though by no means all, are actually quite sociable.
Researchers at the Marine Biological Association of the UK and the University of Exeter studied 10 small groups of cat sharks in three different habitats, and looked at their behavioral patterns.
The research shows that even though sharks are depicted as mindless eating machines, they have unique social patterns that determine how they interact with other sharks.
One of the researchers explained in a press release: “These results were driven by different social preferences … that appeared to reflect different strategies for staying safe. Well-connected individuals formed conspicuous groups, while less social individuals tended to camouflage alone.”
These social or antisocial personality traits were likely developed by the young sharks to avoid being another animal’s lunch.
BBC notes this is far from the first piece of research to suggest that animals have personalities. There has been a lot of evidence that shows individual behavior differences in a large number of species.
These findings for the cat shark actually line up with some results from completely separate research on the lemon shark. Those findings showed consistent personality traits in their test subjects, as well.
So do you think Jaws hung out with other sharks or was more of a loner when he wasn’t terrorizing fisherman?
Agencies/Canadajournal
