Shark taken by bigger predator, what?

"It stayed at that temperature, at varying depths, for about a week" Whatever ate the shark, did not necessarily stay at the depth. It went up, it went down. One other poster suggested maybe the predator took a bite out of the shark where the tag happened to be. If so, it didn't have to be larger than the shark. Maybe another shark or whale.

reply to post by pheonix358


jee's man, relax a little. Its a bit of a humors attempt at Australia's deadliest animals.
no need to be so serious!

reply to post by borntowatch


Seems like a lot of folk are not getting the point that the tracking device was never near the surface for a week, which would preclude all sea mammals.

What about another Great White SharK? Sharks get in feeding frenzies and attack one another. And GW sharks have core temperatures, particularly in the stomach, higher than the surrounding water:

To more successfully hunt fast and agile prey such as sea lions, the great white has adapted to maintain a body temperature warmer than the surrounding water. One of these adaptations is a "rete mirabile" (Latin for "wonderful net"). This close web-like structure of veins and arteries, located along each lateral side of the shark, conserves heat by warming the cooler arterial blood with the venous blood that has been warmed by the working muscles. This keeps certain parts of the body (particularly the stomach) at temperatures up to 14 °C (25 °F) above that of the surrounding water, while the heart and gills remain at sea temperature. When conserving energy the core body temperature can drop to match the surroundings. A great white shark's success in raising its core temperature is an example of gigantothermy. Therefore, the great white shark can be considered an endothermic poikilotherm because its body temperature is not constant but is internally regulated.

Great White Shark adaptations (Wikipedia)


The only other possibility I can imagine is a giant squid, but they are completely cold blooded, which would rule them out.

So is either another Great White or some crypto critteroid, most likely a minion of Cthulhu.

pheonix358
reply to post by Agit8dChop

 

Australia... where the animals on land rival the animals in the water for being the most dangerous predators.

Just see if you can name three land based predators in Australia. Just three would do. Thanks.

P

The brown snake is bad enough. The funnel spider is over the top, though. Do i really need to name a third one? You have spiders that can bite though a mans boot and deliver a venom that kill him.

Australia: out "Texasing" Texas

ETA: what about the drop bear? You think you are walking near an innocent Koala and BOOM...



Out of nowhere....drop bear attack

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


The brown snake runs away most of the time, perhaps if you are a mouse you could call it a predator!

The funnel web spider is not a predator, it never leaves home, just sits at home waiting.

Drop bears are not predators, they are only dangerous within a few seconds at the end of their life.

You can hardly call any of our land animals 'the most dangerous,' well the crocodile comes to mind but that lives in water.

Texas is always a safe haven. You have the Texas Rangers and more guns per head of population that our army.

You also have that Texas super hero, whats his name, oh yea, Barbeque Man.

ROFL

P

Large animal... capable of eating a 3m shark in one bite... off the WA coast...

Its Gina Reinhart. Case closed.

It's an Orca, not sure why there's confusion about it.

There was a thread about it that I saw a while ago

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It shouldn't be assumed that the entire shark was eaten by something. Its more likely that a chunk of meat was taken out of the shark that contained the radio tag. There are quite a few things capable of taking a good sized chunk out of other ocean life, including other sharks and squids.

I have dove with a number of predators, including sharks, and squids are the ones that I never want to run into.

I watched a doco on this event last night. They concluded it was another great white shark. A giant squids mouth does not swallow whole. It crushed into paste.

MrInquisitive
Seems like a lot of folk are not getting the point that the tracking device was never near the surface for a week, which would preclude all sea mammals.

Seems like some folk didn't read the article. The tag, after the temp spike, was recorded at varying depths, which could mean anything between the sea floor and surface. Then there is also the mention of a pod of Killer Whales near the vent that was discovered near the site of Alpha's (the shark) demise. It is entirely possible, in fact highly plausible, especially considering one of the Orca's is called A380 for good reason, that it was attacked by one.

MrInquisitive
What about another Great White SharK? Sharks get in feeding frenzies and attack one another. And GW sharks have core temperatures, particularly in the stomach, higher than the surrounding water:

That is one of the possibilities they considered.

MrInquisitive
The only other possibility I can imagine is a giant squid, but they are completely cold blooded, which would rule them out.

This was ruled out as it is "physiologically impossible", apparently, for a Squid to attack a Great White - not sure why, but I am not the Fishologist.

reply to post by stumason


It could have been an Orca, but after watching the doco and seeing their subsequent research, the candidate is more likely to have been a bigger, great white.

So I retract my comment from earlier, although going on the trailer alone, it seemed as though an Orca was a no brainer.

Let's be rational people. It was Cthulhu.

reply to post by pheonix358


i was so horrifed by the drop bear it made me forget all about the crocodile.

spearhead
I watched a doco on this event last night. They concluded it was another great white shark. A giant squids mouth does not swallow whole. It crushed into paste.

Thanks for posting this. I was hoping someone would catch the docu.

reply to post by borntowatch


I am going to take a stab at this and say one of the larger animals in the ocean got real hungry and decided to take out a shark. The tag got caught on something for about a week until a strong current came by and unhooked it from what it was stuck on.

Or a dino eat the shark. Don`t laugh because the ocean is very deep.

reply to post by borntowatch


I watched a documentary just yesterday on killer whales and they DO hunt white sharks. There was a video of them hunting one. They know exactly what to do. They turn the shark upside down which induces a catatonic state and the shark goes limp. It basically drowns. At that point the killer whales are free to do to it whatever they want. The advantage the killer whales have is pack knowledge that is passed down from one generation to the next. The white shark is a loner. It may be smart, but not smart enough to fight a pack of very smart mammals.

Interesting area Western Australia. The fact that this speaks volumes on the lack of knowledge humanity has on the largest area on the face of the planet. whilst i was skeptical of Orcas being in the area of WA, the fact that this marine scientist may have actually preserved the entire region from being industrially monopolised in the future.
Just one querie though, if the great white can dive to over 580m, yet the orca only has a depth ceiling of some 200mtres, wouldn't it make sense that something else killed the great white. Maybe a " Meg"..... move over jaws, looks like ur long lost Uncle JOE is back

sweeper84
If the tag was external on the shark, is it possible that another creature took only 1 bite at the shark, and doing so, ate the tag with it?
It doesn't have to be something that eat the whole shark.

I was thinking the same thing. What if only the area holding the tag was bitten and removed. It could have been anything big enough to swallow the tag. It doesn't mean the shark was killed.

reply to post by M3RCSENTINAL


The problem I have with the thought of a Meg surviving is that Megs were whale preds the same way that their smaller cousins Great Whites are seal preds. They need the blubber to fuel their metabolisms.

When we were killing all the whales we could in the 17th, 18th, and 19th century, every whaling boat in existence was basically a huge chumming operation for megalodons as whales were killed and slaughtered on the open ocean in a very bloody process. Not only that, but we created a sort of prey problem for them by nearly wiping out their food sources.

If there really were megalodons in existence still (I'm not opposed to it being true), you would have thought there would be plenty of surviving accounts in whaling literature of them poaching whale carcasses off the sides of whaling ships as not every encounter would have proven fatal, not just indeterminate accounts of sea monsters.

And even if there were accounts of megalodons, they would have had an even harder time surviving the near extinction of whales than the whales themselves did.

Nope, this had to be either an orca as they are capable and some pods specialize in shark killing or a large shark.

reply to post by borntowatch


I just watched a tv show on sbs in Australia on this subject.they guy that tagged the shark went out to where the shark had dived down to see if he could find anything, he found a hotspot for killer whales with babys,if there white shark showed up I think the adult killer whales would have went to any length to protect,but 580m down, underwater for a week with no air and at a depth.its really strange.i don't know if its real or not they say a lock ness look a like was seen in Australia with a pic that does look like it,i don't think it is but what im getting at is with all the beachings could big sea things be looking for food an have to come in closer to land cause there food is running out,perth in west Australia has seen a huge rise in white shark attacks in the last week could the sharks be getting run out of the deeper water,an could this sea thing live in the artic oceans that's why cold seas at a depth dont bother it. but who knows but the oceans are realy getting strange, Cheers form Australia