Sharks Exam 2 Flashcards
What are types of predatory behavior?
chasing, hunting by speculation, ambushing, stalking, luring, scavenging
What type of body makes sharks ideal hunters?
Fusiform
What kind of feeders are sharks?
Opportunistic feeders
What is speculative hunting?
They hunt in area that they assume will have fish or
follow another animal that may lead it to food. This is a learned or innate/genetically programmed behavior.
Example of speculative feeding?
Rays position themselves at high tide water movement areas and wait to be flushed out.
Tiger sharks aggregate during june/july during fledging periods of birds, eating the them as they land on the water.
What is ambushing?
Hidden, waits for prey to come to it, then launches at prey as it comes by.
What is stalking?
Uses stealth and approaches prey.
What is the difference between stalking and ambushing?
Ambushing prey comes to it, where stalking predator goes to prey
What kind of hunting do white sharks do?
stalking and speculation
What is luring and example?
Lure prey to eat. Cookiecutter sharks glow or flash and fish are attracted to it. Parasitic shark.
Kite fin and Greenland do similar
White tip shark is believed to attract prey with tips of fins. Hunt in groups one lures fish in until it is surrounded.
WHat does a tiger shark do?
scavenge but not exclusively. dead whales and fish
Do sharks do cooperative or group foraging?
possibly, not known if its cooperative or aggregations. Aggregations of shark work together to feed.
Sevengill sharks encircle a seal slowly tightening the circle until one strikes.
Thresher sharks herd fish with tail.
Black tip drive bait on to the beach
Generally eat one at a time.
How do sharks avoid predation?
disruptive coloring, false eye spot, cyrpsis, spines, large body size, electric discharge, crypsis and immobility
What is disruptive coloring?
morphology-has patterns, bar up/down or stripes head to tail
ex. rays blend in with surrounding to avoid hammerhead
What is false eye spot, how does it work?
Large round spots generally in a location that is affordable to lose. Other thought is that it startles the fish enough to get away.
Eye is big, makes fish look bigger.
What is crypsis?
has appendages that look like seaweed or coral. Acts like camo, allow them to hide to catch prey and be hidden.
Can have both crypsis and disruptive coloring
How do spines help?
Most are poisonous spines. ie Horned shark
Example of avoiding predation with large body?
Whale shark
What is capable of electric discharge?
California electric ray and common electric
How do crypsis & immobility work?
Ray buries itself in the sand and remains still until prey comes by or it detects the electrical signal
How do sharks behaviorly avoid predation?
refuging, display, schooling
What are two types of refuging?
biotic refuging-gather in a group, hide in numbers, not necessarily school
abiotic refuging-move to shallow water
What is the apparent looming threshold?
the point at which the distance and the size of the object makes one flee.
An advantage to having a long beak, fish focus on the body size and don’t see the beak until it is too late
How do behavioral displays work?
drops pectoral fin, then moves up and down in the water column. Confused, attacking and withdrawing, attacks out of fear
Are these proven predation behaviors?
No, none of these have ever been proven
How does schooling avoid predation?
Reduced predation due to the confusion affect. Predators cant fixate on one fish when there are many moving.
Also diluted affect-the predator cant eat all of the fish.
Fish are considered schooling when?
they are polarized and synchronized. increased vigilance.
What are types of prey capture?
suction feeding, bite feeding, ram feeding
What is pure suction feeding?
predator is stationary and prey is moving or being sucted out
ex.bamboo and nurse, spotted eagle ray
What is pure ram feeding?
prey is not moving only predator
predator moving at high rate, prey is stationary
ex. white shark-very little suction
What is bite feeding?
prey is not moving
predator moving at medium rate, prey is stationary
ex.hammerhead shark uses cephalofoil to stun ray then bites
What type of mouth do suction feeders have?
round small mouth, laterally occluded by labial cartilage (swings forward making opening), rapid jaw opening ( 35ms to open), enlarged hypertrophied jaw abductor muscle, small teeth, little cranial elevation