When I would be a shark and came across a whale, no matter its size, I would bite off its fins and start eating. Same with a big ray. How do those animals survive so long anyway?
In: Biology
Agreed. How the hell does the manatee population survive the alligators and crocs and sharks…
Seems like no one has brought up cookie cutter sharks yet. There is a whole species of deep sea dwelling shark that is adapted around taking a little bite out of larger fish/sharks/whales. Cookie cutters bite so well and often that the US navy had to redesign some of its submarines! The size ratio means that even if something like a cookie cutter shark takes a bitE out of a blue whale that the ratio of lost flesh is probably similar to a tick taking some of your blood.
One fling with a fin or abrupt movement, they are dead. Why risk it? (Evolutionarily speaking, the individual has no such knowledge)
Sharks are quite delicate creatures and demand quite a specific diet, there is a great video for ELI5:
Every strategy to survive has a counter. Whales are big and slow but strong and can dive deep. Orcas prevent smaller whales from surfacing to breath and kill them that way. Smaller sharks like the cookie cutter shark just take small bite size round plugs out.
And things like white sharks are known to hunt whales, particularly weaker ones like injured or sick whales
Have you ever seen what orcas do to seals? They literally coordinate a hunt for fun. The force they can achieve with one swipe is insane.
Sharks don’t do all that much thinking. They are mostly programmed by evolution to eat certain types of things. Certain things *look and act* like food to a shark.
A huge ass whale that can wreck a shark doesn’t look or act like food. That’s it. The shark doesn’t think long and hard about the cost versus rewards analysis. He doesn’t contemplate tactics like trying to sneak up and grab a fin at a time. He doesn’t think about grabbing his shark buds and ambushing a whale as a squad. He just moves on and eats something else that does ping his food radar.
Now a dead whale doesn’t look like food but he sure does act like it… In the event that an animal only looks **or** acts like food… a shark may experiment with a small bite and retreat to safety to see what’s up.
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