Sharks after all are not silent

At least one shark species has a bark to go along with its bite. It can make clicking on sounds, researchers report, a first one among an animal group that once thought to be completely silent.

During his doctorate study at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, Carolin Nieder studied, now at Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Snharing. When she handled the sharks during the experiment, she noticed a species – a houndharn called the rig (Mustelus Lenticulatus) – seemed to make metallic click sounds.

“I just ignored it because sharks shouldn’t make sounds,” says Nieder. “And it just continued to happen.”

The ability to produce sounds is intentionally common among soil vertebrates, as a world full of brird kirping and mammalian -dwelling illustrators. But underwater, many fish emit sounds by scraping objects or vibrating their muscles, and by 2022 researchers reported that some rays – close relatives of sharks – will click when disturbed by miscellaneous. No shark sounds were formally described yet.

To confirm the existence of the noise of the rig, Nieder and her colleagues Bruht 10 young rigs were captured in the water at New Zealand’s North Island into the laboratory. There they were placed in tanks with sensitive audio recording instruments. The team gently handled the sharks and found that all of them made a click noise in responsible. The rig appears to be the first shark known to produce sounds that are not associated with other actions, such as feeding or encountering something.

The researchers believe that the sharks may produce the sounds by merging their jaws. Like the click rays, the rig has flattered teeth, which may create a SNHARP Soundpon influence. Listen below.

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Further research can configure the source of the click and if it has been fun. Nieder points out that Rig is a small shark and potentially prey for larger animals, so it is possible that the click has a role in the defense when the animal is slightly or greasy.

“It may be to disorient the predator a little,” she says. It is also possible that the click has a role in hunting, she adds, such as scary or discombobubulating the shark’s crustaceans.

“This is a long overlooked, but potential is really important is of shark biology,” says Aaron Rice at Cornell University in New York, who was not involved in research.

If the sound production is widespread among sharks, their clicks can be used to study their often space population, says Rice. There are a large wealth of sound data registered from fish and whale surveys that may have also caught shark sounds, he says. These could be used to determine if sharks we in the area add another tool for monitoring the imperilated predators.

“” “[The finding] Represents what is really a new discovery in basic biology, “says Rice.” It highlights the fact that there is so much we do not know about the sea. “