yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

TIL: How Cookiecutter Sharks Eat Is Terrifying (Explained With Cookies) | Today I Learned


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

In the same way you might take a Christmas tree and stick it in dough and have perfect edges, the cookie cutter shark is able to do this with its teeth. A cookie cutter shark is sometimes known as a cigar shark because of the shape of its body. They're deep water species, and they're really creepy looking. They have large eyes, funny shaped snouts, and a mouth with triangulated teeth on the bottom and erect teeth on the top.

While it has an adorable name, it's capable of cutting perfectly cylindrical plugs of flesh out of its victims. Cookie cutter sharks spend the majority of their time at depths below 1,000 meters, so below 3,200 feet in the sea. They're extremely deep water sharks, but the interesting thing is that they come up at night to hunt.

They're successful in feeding at nighttime because they have photophores which emit bioluminescent light that mimic smaller fish. So, animals like dolphins, whales, marlins, and tuna think that these glowing lights on the cookie cutter shark are actually prey. When they come in to bite, thinking that it's a smaller fish, they find themselves in a world of hurt because the cookie cutter shark then turns around, suctions its lips and its top teeth to their body, and then spins its body ejecting a perfectly cylindrical plug of flesh.

The cookie cutter shark is the only parasitic shark in the entire animal kingdom. They are quite small; the males only get up to about 16 inches with females to about 22 inches. So, when they are attacking their prey, they really only take plugs in the way that a parasite would do, and it's quite a characteristic plug shape. In fact, they've even found some of these plugs on the heads of nuclear submarines.

Humans don't encounter them very often because during the daytime, they're generally significantly deeper than human activity. So, unless you're in the deep ocean in the middle of the night, it's probably safe to say you won't be attacked by a cookie cutter shark.

More Articles

View All
Gender Revolution: Live Aftershow with Katie Couric | National Geographic
Hi everyone! Thank you so much for being here and thanks to so many of you who just tuned in to watch Gender Revolution on National Geographic. My hope was always that this film could be a conversation starter for people all across the country and around …
"The SECRET To Business Success In 2021 IS THIS!.." | Kevin O'Leary & Gary Vee
So in this crazy outcome that I could have never foreseen, 80% of the portfolio, even though revenues are down, are actually ahead of free cash flow forecasts. You cannot, people, you can’t lie to them. You have to be totally transparent, whether that’s g…
Importance of water for life | Chemistry of life | AP Biology | Khan Academy
When we look out into the cosmos for alien life, many folks look for signs of water on moons or planets. That’s because life, as we know it, is dependent on water. To understand that, we just have to take a closer look at some of the properties of water. …
LC natural response derivation 1
In this video, we’re going to begin the derivation of the LC natural response, the response of an inductor capacitor circuit. This is a difficult derivation, but it really pays off in the end. There’s a real fun surprise at the end, and that is this is wh…
The Most Common Cognitive Bias
I’m gonna give you guys three numbers. A three number sequence, and I have a rule in mind that these three numbers obey. I want you to try to figure out what that rule is. But the way you can get information is by proposing your own set of three numbers, …
Derivative as a concept | Derivatives introduction | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy
You are likely already familiar with the idea of a slope of a line. If you’re not, I encourage you to review it on Khan Academy. But all it is, it’s describing the rate of change of a vertical variable with respect to a horizontal variable. So, for examp…