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u/Miserable-Staff1605 4d ago edited 4d ago
I’m pretty sure they’re parasitic copepods (basically little shark fleas) They make the shark itchy but are pretty common. sharks will try to remove them by breaching & jumping out of the water or rubbing against rocks and the ocean floor. Cleaner fish will also snack on them too.
Edit: I just went down a google rabbit hole - I wasn’t aware that some parasitic copepods actually feed on a shark’s blood or tissue, causing inflammation, wounds, & infections (so not just itching). Fun little fact: apparently Galapagos sharks have been observed rubbing against manta rays using their rough skin as scratching posts 😂
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u/Iridismis 4d ago
It must really suck to have no hands.
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u/niniela-phoenix 4d ago
I have hands. Does that mean they'd let me scratch them 👀
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u/Miserable-Staff1605 4d ago
I’d say no unless you quite literally want to feed, I mean give them your hands 🙌🏼
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u/Economy-Career-7473 4d ago
Greenland sharks have been seen with them on their eyes.
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u/Miserable-Staff1605 4d ago
Talk about nightmare fuel! Imagine living for hundreds of years in the frigid pitch black Arctic waters just so a copepod can make your cornea its buffet. Up until recently, scientists assumed this was the main reason (aside from living in pitch darkness) Greenland sharks went blind. It turns out that despite the surface damage, their underlying retinas don’t degenerate. They’ve caught footage of their eyeballs tracking light, so they’re not nearly as blind as we once thought they were.
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u/camimiele Shortfin Mako Shark 4d ago edited 4d ago
So I made a comment saying that a lot of Greenland sharks are blind due to this, but new research from this year suggests otherwise! Really cool article!
“”Biologists have long believed these sharks to be practically blind, in part because of their tendency to attract parasites that attack and lodge themselves inside the sharks’ corneas. But this work challenges that belief, the researchers write, showing that even centuries-old Greenland sharks retain a visual system “well-adapted for life in dim light.”
“Evolutionarily speaking, you don’t keep the organ that you don’t need,” said Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of California, Irvine, and a co-author of the paper, in a statement. “After watching many videos, I realized this animal is moving its eyeball toward the light.””
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u/Redneck_PBR 4d ago
I'm more curious on how it got that chunk taken out of the upper part of it's mouth.
Animals amaze me with what they can survive and just keep trucking through.
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u/Odd-Public10 4d ago
Most likely? Sex.
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u/MfD2027 3d ago
Most likely not.
They don’t bite anywhere near that close, because y’know, what would the natural reaction of a 19-foot shark be to a 12-foot shark trying to eat its face?They are much better off grabbing gills and fins, facial bites only stemming from territorial/aggressive behaviour, likely an equally large female*.*
People seen one shark sex video I’m guessing and now every little nook, cranny, bite or scratch seems to be “shark-sex” to some “experts” on Reddit lol just something I noticed.
EDIT: looking closer, might not even be a female, certainly not a little shark, but not the most “massive” looking from this angle, possible claspers in the back, but could be just my brain or something.
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u/FastMako77 3d ago
Looks like my dachshund when he gets his lip stuck on his tooth. Shark has permanent “grr face.”
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u/awoofwoofwoof SHARK 4d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/11EbPKAjVLw5dS
shark looking like billy idol with that sneer
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u/monkeydude777 4d ago
Looks like a shark to me
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u/Iridismis 4d ago
Maybe even a sharknado shark 🤔
(Imo with the background so cloudy it almost looks like the shark is flying through the sky)
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u/tideshark Sandtiger Shark 4d ago
If you cover the mid-left part of his mouth where it hasn’t been battle damaged, it looks like it’s smiling.
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u/brodoswaggins93 4d ago
Very possibly parasites. There's a particular species of parasitic copepod that has a really long "string/tail" hanging off or it and they tend to parasitize sharks pretty often.