So before we get into the weird details, you probably assume that sharks will eat just about anything, including their own young. After all, sharks eat. It's what they do. They're eating machines. Nature lets them know this at the fetus stage by basically making them eat their own unborn siblings to survive.
You see, some sharks have live births with placentas, kind of like mammals. But others don't -- in other words, they have live babies, but don't have an organ to feed the developing fetuses. So guess where they get their nourishment.
That's right: Ovoviviparous sharks eat each other in the womb.
WikipediaParticularly nurse sharks, which just proves that science loves irony.
So these sharklets are attacking and killing each other before they're even born, but not just because they're vicious, soulless carnivores. The babies have to eat each other or they'll starve -- Mother Nature literally gave them no other choice. From their first wriggling moments of life, they find themselves in a tiny, pitch-dark enclosed place that they don't realize is about to become The Hunger Games.
There may be as many as 20 eggs starting out in two uteri, and each will hatch and live peacefully inside the mother. Maybe they all become friends. But very quickly they will develop jaws, and teeth, and they will grow hungry. They will look for food, find none, and finally realize in their tiny fetal shark brains that the only thing standing between them and starvation is their own brothers and sisters.
Wikipedia"I am not in the mood for your human bullshit. It's like Dawn of the Dead back here."
We can't know how painful for the mother this internal, frenzied death match is or isn't. But you'd have to think that having 20 sets of panicked, snapping shark jaws inside your belly would be a hell of a lot more than a tickle. It seems like they'd constantly be missing and biting off a big chunk of uterus instead.
Of the 20 shark babies that hatch, one from each uterus will survive to be born into the world. And each one will be one jaded son of a bitch.
noaa.gov"Just get inside. Everything is pointless."
Monte Richard is a columnist for The Daft Gadgets. You can also check out his blog.
For reasons you shouldn't appreciate your mother, check out 7 Things 'Good Parents' Do (That Screw Up Kids For Life) and Your Mom Lied: 5 Common Body Myths Debunked.
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