Sharks prefer to hang out with their relatives, suggests a new study. Family ties shape the social lives of the aggressive predators, say scientists. They found that bull sharks have a slight preference for spending time with relatives.
Study Findings
The research team used genetic data and six years of observations at Shark Reef Marine Reserve in Fiji, where adult bull sharks regularly gather. The results show most of the sharks are not closely related — but individuals are slightly more likely to associate and socialize with relatives than unrelated sharks.
The researchers — from the University of Exeter, Lancaster University and Fiji Shark Lab — coined the term ‘kinfluence’ to describe the influence of kinship on social structure and social behavior. Study lead author Natasha Marosi said: ‘Large sharks are often seen as solitary, but our previous research showed that bull sharks actively choose their social partners.’
Marosi, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Exeter and founder of Fiji Shark Lab, added: ‘To discover that some of these large, apex predators choose to socialize with their relatives is truly exciting, it’s something never found before in an adult population of sharks.’ Sharks’ social preferences were measured in two ways, by proximity-based ‘associations’ — being within one body length of each other — and directed social interactions such as parallel swimming, ‘lead-follow’ swim configuration and ‘joining’ — when one shark actively joins another to swim in synchronization.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
