TAKING out a world record is quite an achievement, so there must be massive excitement in the aquatic realm this month at news that whale sharks have dethroned the fearsome Kodiak bear as “the world’s largest omnivore”. Apparently marine scientists have always thought whale sharks were strictly carnivorous, feeding on...
TAKING out a world record is quite an achievement, so there must be massive excitement in the aquatic realm this month at news that whale sharks have dethroned the fearsome Kodiak bear as “the world’s largest omnivore”.
Apparently marine scientists have always thought whale sharks were strictly carnivorous, feeding on a diet of small fish, prawns and plankton, reports Australian Geographic.
Not so – after studying the whale shark population off Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, CSIRO researchers have found they also ingest a type of seaweed.
The mind-boggling breakthrough was achieved by analysing biopsy samples from the huge marine creatures and then comparing them with amino acids and fatty acids found in possible food sources.
They also confirmed the findings by catching whale poo in a net and going through it – probably a job given to an enthusiastic intern, we suspect.
Because whale sharks can grow up to 18m in length, that now makes them the world’s largest omnivore – a title previously held by Ursus arctos middendorffi, “a unique subspecies of brown bear endemic to the Kodiak Archipelago south of Alaska”.
The findings were reportrd in the Ecology scientific journal in a paper simply titled “The world’s largest omnivore is a fish”.
