I guess they have to resort to this until the lasers are fitted.
Baby sharks are so HARDCORE they avoid baddies like tiny ninjas
Baby sharks can fool passing predators even before they're born - by freezing on the spot or simply playing dead. Shark embryo in an egg case The embryonic sharklings can sense a hungry predator by detecting their electric fields and avoid being eaten by staying very still and slowing down their breathing. Boffins already …
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Thursday 10th January 2013 12:44 GMT All names Taken
Maybe we read too much into the baby shark responses?
"predators approaching" thing
surely a baby shark in an egg is too young (it has not been to shark school yet?) to judge whether a change in incoming sensory info is threatening or non-threatening. Those baby sharks that did not temper their breathing merely becoming food so giving an impression that there is intelligence where really it is a sensory response of a particular kind?
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Thursday 10th January 2013 14:36 GMT Mayhem
Not only is it an innate avoidance response but I expect it also acts as a training mechanism over time for identifying what is happening around them - adult sharks (along with many other predatory fish) use electroreception heavily to locate and capture prey once they have been drawn to the right general area.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 19:03 GMT Dave 126
@All Names Taken
You're right, but I don't think anyone said 'intelligence'. The phrase the researches are reported to have used is:
"Embryonic sharks are able to recognise dangerous stimuli and react with an innate avoidance response,"
Presumably, 'dangerous stimuli' is anything big enough to eat them, whilst smaller movements in the environment can be ignored.
On a similar note, did anyone see that programme recently about baby sharks (of those species that give birth) eating their siblings whilst still inside their mother, and then munching on subsequent eggs? Before they are born, they have already killed.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 15:41 GMT AJ MacLeod
Re: Astounding sensitivity
Every one of these examples of sensory capability is still astounding though - that there are so many different examples of amazing sensory systems in nature (many of which we just can't come close to matching in manufactured systems) around us doesn't make them less impressive, rather more so.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 18:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
HARDCORE
"Baby sharks are so HARDCORE they avoid baddies like tiny ninjas. Baby sharks can fool passing predators even before they're born - by freezing on the spot or simply playing dead." Ripper was pretty hardcore too. But thanks to his grip of drugs, he wasn't just playing dead. So he was even MOAR hardcore. Always remember his last words: "u are so fucking stupid".