Three Leopard sharks made history. Outside the coral rich in New Caledonia, in the blue Reef, they showed unprecedented sexual behavior.
Dr. Hugo Lasuce, Marine Biologist at the University of Sunshine Coast (UNISC), was diving as part of a research mission to monitor the behavior of wild sharks. He had seen short signs of shark courtship before. But on this particular day, something strange happened.
“I saw a female with two men grabbing her pectoral fins in the sand under me,” Lasuce said Cosmos Magazine. “I told my colleague to take the boat to avoid disturbances, and started waiting on the surface, looking at the almost motionless sharks at the bottom of the sea.”
He floated on them, his chamber ready, his body trembling in the water for almost an hour. Then it happened.
110 seconds that changed what we know about leopard sharks
In a precise and quiet sequence that developed for 90 minutes, the two men alternated in mating with the female. The real act lasted only 110 seconds: 63 for the first man, 47 for the second. Subsequently, the males collapsed in the seabed, exhausted. The female swam, with visible wounds in her pectoral fins.
This marked the first documented observation of the wild intercourse in the Indo-Pacific Leopard Shark (Steostoma tigrinum). Leopard shark is an elusive and endangered species. His reproductive habits were, until now, only witnessed through an aquarium glass. It was also one of the most unusual mating screens ever observed in sharks.
Leopard sharks are found in the Indo-West Pacific from East Africa to the Coastal Arrecifes of Australia and the Pacific Islands. However, despite this wide range, they are still a mystery in nature. Its number has collapsed in Southeast Asia and the Western Indian Ocean, largely due to overfishing and habitat destruction. In many regions, they have completely disappeared.
“Out of Australia, where they are quite healthy, the species is considered in danger of extinction due mainly to the overfishing,” said Dr. Christine Dudgeon, an Ecologist Marina de Unisc and co -author of the new study, published in the Ethology magazine. “Not only for fins but for other products, including a more recent discovery of the use of your skin to line up walls in luxury yachts,” he told the alphabet.
Why does this matter for shark conservation
Until now, most of what scientists knew about the reproduction of leopard sharks come from captivity. It has been observed that males hold on females with their mouths, pushing and inserting their cezpers (elongated reproductive organs). But these behaviors had never been captured in nature.
The mating occurred in an under -deep reef area only 15 kilometers from the coast of Nouméa. This is a part of the South Pacific archipelago where Lasuce and his colleagues had been doing long -term field work under the Collective reject. Reshark is a global effort to recover the populations of sharks in danger of extinction.
“This evidence suggests that the site in Nueva Caledonia is a critical mating habitat,” Dudgeon said in Cosmos Magazine. “You can inform management and conservation strategies, as well as help us understand the dynamics of the population and the most widely widely reproductive behaviors.”
And that dynamic can be surprisingly complex.
“It is surprising and fascinating that two men were involved sequentially on this occasion,” Dudgeon also said The guardian. “From a perspective of genetic diversity, we want to find out how many parents contribute to the lots of the established eggs every year by females.”
We do not know much about how female sharks select companions. We do not know if they choose a man or tolerate multiple, for example. This behavior vision can shed light on how populations maintain genetic diversity in increasingly fragmented habitats.
These discoveries also have practical applications. Multiple countries, including Australia, are now exploring artificial insemination techniques to reintroduce leopard sharks in areas where they have disappeared. Knowing how the species is naturally accompanied, including time and behavior, is essential to replicate that success in laboratory environments.
Even smaller details matter. The study noticed a “structured sequence” of behavior. It implies prolonged positioning, stillness synchronized in the seabed and the use of siphon sacks: childbirth organs that help to force the sperm to the female during mating. These are clues of a choreography that has evolved for millions of years, but it was still difficult to achieve.
The secret life of sharks
Lasauce, meanwhile, had waited weeks for that moment.
“We have been seeing and observing some courtship events [over several weeks] Where the male will try a little with the woman, but nothing happened, “he said alphabet. “This day simply happened.”
Sharks have traveled the oceans for more than 400 million years, however, many of their behaviors remain as enigmatic as the deep ones that inhabit.
Unlike marine mammals such as dolphins, which are involved in frequent and observable social exhibitions, sharks do not build nests, sing to attract companions or get involved in elaborate courtship rituals (which we know). For many species, including Leopard Shark, sexual reproduction is a brief, raw and rarely witnessed matter. The recent observation against the coast of Nueva Caledonia, where two men documented sequentially with a single woman, offers a rare and invaluable window in the reproductive life of these old predators. This event, which lasts only 110 seconds, has significantly expanded our understanding of the behavior of the Leopard Shark and stressed the complexities of its mating strategies.
The challenges of studying shark reproduction in nature are immense. Many species are lonely, they inhabit remote or deep water environments, and are highly migratory. The act of mating is often a brutal matter. The male sharks have two cezuperas, modified pelvic fins used to transfer sperm to the female. To get the purchase during intercourse, men often bordering the pectoral fins of women or back, a behavior that can leave it with significant wounds. In an evolutionary response, the skin of some female sharks is more than double thick than that of males.
Shark reproductive strategies are remarkably diverse. Some species are oviparous, placing eggs locked in a resistant bag and often called “siren wallet”. Others are viviparous, giving birth to living young people who have nourished through a placental connection, as well as mammals. A third strategy is ovovivipity, where eggs hatch inside the mother’s body, and puppies are born live. In some ovovipiparan species, there is a bleak form of intrauterine cannibalism, where the greatest and stronger embryo consumes its brothers in the uterus. Surprisingly, some female sharks are also capable of parthenogenesis, or “virginal birth”, an asexual form of reproduction where an embryo develops from an un fertilized egg.
The brief and fleeting moments witnessed in the waters of Nueva Caledonia serve as a powerful reminder of how much we have to learn about the secret life of sharks.
The images recorded in Abele Reef are available here.
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