Joshua Rapp LearnThere’s no honor among thieves—or thieving sharks, according to new research. In the warm waters off of French Polynesia, gangs of hundreds of gray reef sharks have been seen stealing the hard-won prey of whitetip reef sharks—in some cases, right out of their mouths.
The new study, with accompanying video, is the first to show one species of sharks habitually “bumming” food off another shark species.Getting the footage wasn’t easy, says Johann Mourier, a behavioral ecologist with the French Institute of Research for Development and one of the co-authors of the new study.
He was part of an expedition that visited the islands every year from 2014 to 2018, and he made countless night dives near the southern pass of the.