Even nature's marine giants have to be weary of the Great White shark's predatory power. 

On Monday, the carcass of a 50-foot Southern right whale washed up on a beach near Cape Town, South Africa, The Daily Mail's Leon Watson reports. 

Portions of the whale had been devoured by Great Whites, littering the ocean with its remains. 

"It has been established that the whale has been bitten several times by great white sharks, and the bay is covered in a lot of blood and pieces of blubber are afloat at sea," a spokesman from Cape Town's disaster risk management team said. 

Beaches were temporarily closed since the decomposing body was attracting sharks. The carcass was eventually removed and loaded on the back of a flat-bed truck to be disposed of in a landfill. 

The cause of the death is still unknown. The whale could have been ambushed while it was alive or died from sickness, according to city officials. 

The Southern right whale's death poses strange timing. Just yesterday, a finback whale of similar size washed ashore in Boston Harbor. Scientists say it's pretty rare for a whale to float into the harbor (there are typically only three to four whale sighting a year) and the cause of death still needs to be determined. The whale may have perished from natural causes, colliding with a boat, or getting caught in fishing lines.  

While we're speculating, a recent study found that most large whale deaths in the northwest Atlantic Ocean were human-caused. Getting trapped in fishing gear was the leading cause of death. Humans probably have a similar influence in other parts of the world. 

In the photo below, you can see that large chunks of the whale's tail are missing. 

Workers used a bulldozer to flip the whale over. Southern right whales, which are commonly found in the coastal waters of South Africa can weigh up to 94,000 pounds.  

Samples taken from the animal will be analyzed to determine the cause of death. 

SEE ALSO: This Is What The Inside Of A Great White Shark Looks Like > 

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Today in weird news: a shark fell out of the sky onto the 12th tee box at a golf course in California.

The shark was wounded and bloody but alive, according to the Capistrano Dispatch.

It was about two-feet long, light brown, and had black spots. The shark was discovered by a course marshall who brought it to the club house, put it in a bucket with water and salt and drove it back to the ocean to release it.

San Juan Hill Golf Club Director of Club Communications Melissa McCormack told the Capistrano Dispatch:

"It was just wriggling around. Honestly, this is the weirdest thing that’s happened here.”

McCormack says the shark was probably plucked up from the ocean by a predatory bird and then dropped over the golf course, but it's still unknown how it actually got there.

[h/t Deadspin]

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Sixteen people are wounded when a shark-filled aquarium bursts at a shopping centre in Shanghai, sending glass and fish flying, state media reports.

Surveillance video shown today on Chinese state broadcaster CCTV captured the moment a 33-tonne aquarium housing sharks, turtles and fish suddenly shattered at Shanghai's Orient shopping centre, injuring 16 people.

The giant tank burst with no warning on December 18, sending glass and fish flying into the crowd.

A man, who was taking pictures of the tank when it broke, was swept away by water, the video showed.

Shoppers, shop assistants and mall security staff suffered cuts and bruises as pieces of six-inch thick acrylic glass flew through the air, CCTV reported.

Three lemon sharks and dozens of turtles and small fish were killed in the incident, according to local media reports.

Police have launched an investigation. Preliminary investigations suggest low temperatures and the age of the materials used were to blame for the incident.

The shopping mall said they had no plans to rebuild the aquarium that had become a popular site since it was installed two years ago.

Source: Reuters

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This picture of a large shark chowing down on a smaller shark was posted by Reddit user Mancubus1 a few days ago. 

According to a New Zealand news outlet, the picture was taken off Kaiteriteri Beach in New Zealand. Mancubus1 was reeling in the juvenile school shark when a bigger blue shark came along and snagged it. 

Marine scientist Clinton Duffy tells that news site that this event isn't that unusual.

''Blue sharks often steal fish off people's lines at this time of year and they also commonly eat other shark species," he said. 

A shark's eye socket rolls back as a form of protection during an attack, which is why their eyes look white in the picture. 

SEE ALSO: A Curious Sea Turtle Won't Stop Bothering This Scuba Diver

SEE ALSO: This Is What The Inside Of A Great White Shark Looks Like

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Bamboo sharks developing in an egg case can sense predators and stay still to avoid detection, according to a new study published by today, Jan. 9, in the journal PLoS One.

Bamboo sharks develop independently of their mother inside leathery egg cases for five months. During this time they are extremely vulnerable to predators and have to remain undetected in order to survive.

It's know that predators, such as sharks, have highly sensitive electroreceptors that they use to detect electrical fields emitted by their prey. Previously no one has studied whether this mechanism can be used by prey animals to avoid their predators.

Ryan Kempster from the University of Western Australia and colleagues collected and monitored 11 bamboo shark embryo from the Underwater World and Daydream Island Resort aquaria in Queensland, Australia. 

The embryos were placed in an aquarium and the water was stimulated to mimic the electrical field given off by a predator at various stages of their development. In the later stages, the sharks were able to detect the electrical field and quickly froze, even stopping their gill movements to decrease their own electrical field and avoid detection

The research is important for developing a shark repellent to keep humans from being attacked. This would involve sending out electrical signals that sharks are afraid of. On the flip side, the electrical field can also be used to protect the millions of sharks that accidentally get caught on fishing hooks each year.  

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The cat-sized shark in the picture to the right doesn't look that intimidating, but it has the power to take down an entire nuclear submarine. The fish's strange bite can get at the softer areas of the submarines, National Geographic's Ed Yong reports:

The fearless cookie-cutters have even disabled the most dangerous ocean creature of all—the nuclear submarine. They attacked exposed soft areas including electrical cables and rubber sonar domes. In several cases, the attacks effectively blinded the subs, forcing them back to base for repairs. They later returned, fitted with fibreglass coverings.

The attacks happened in the 1970s and the problem seems to have been taken care of, though in several cases the sharks did enough damage to the vessel's sonar equpiment that the oils inside that transmit sound would leak out of the ship and break the equipment — the subs could no longer see what was around them, according to the ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research.

Nuclear subs obviously aren't all that tasty, but they seem to bite just about anything — even research equipment in the ocean. The distinctive bites have been found in all kinds of fish and other sharks, and even a human has been attacked by the little guys.

See the rest of Yong's blog post for more fascinating facts about the cookiecutter shark and the analysis of a new paper out in Pacific Science this month, detailing cookiecutter bites on a great white shark. Here are some more images:

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If you are ever searching for a great white shark, look no further than the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker, which provides the location of all the tagged great white sharks in the world. The sharks have been tagged with a tracker that communicates with research satellites, telling scientists the shark's location.

Great white sharks live throughout the oceans of the world, anywhere the water is between 54 and 75 degrees. They aren't uncommon off the coast of the U.S.

The researchers have posted all the GPS data from the sharks they track online, where you can see the latest blip from the trackers on a map, and dive into any individual shark's previous blips, which indicate where they have been in the past.

From this, we can see there's a great white shark named Mary Lee that's been swimming up and down the East Coast since September. She is currently off the coast of New Jersey. Mary Lee is a 16-foot-long female Great White shark weighing almost 3500 pounds. She was first tagged in Cape Cod on 17 September, and the researchers have been tracking her ever since. Here's where she's been since then:

A second female shark, name Genie, was also tagged in Cape Cod, and has since settled off the coast of South Carolina. The rest of the sharks that have been tagged by the researchers are hanging out at the tip of South Africa or near Madagascar. Take a look at the map for yourself. Here's the latest:

SEE ALSO: This Is What The Inside Of A Great White Shark Looks Like

SEE ALSO: These Rare Sharks Are Some Of The Weirdest Animals On Earth

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The ocean is still mysterious place, but one thing we know: The Great White shark is a fearsome predator. Why would someone willingly jump into the water with one, as we see freediver Ocean Ramsey do in the video below?

"While swimming with sharks is certainly a thrilling experience, my attraction to purposely come face to face with sharks such as Great Whites, Tigers and others is for a different reason – advocating shark conservation," she wrote in a blog post at waterinspired.com. "Sharks are intelligent, calculated and generally very cautious about approaching humans. More importantly, sharks play a vital role in maintaining a healthy ocean ecosystem."

The underwater video was shot with a Go Pro HD HERO2 camera. The company posted the video on YouTube with this caption:

This year on Valentine's Day, celebrate the love we have for the natural world around us. Join freediver Ocean Ramsey as she shares a quiet moment with a Great White Shark.

For more information on shark awareness and conservation, please visit waterinspired.com

Here's the video:

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Austin Powers' Dr. Evil had one simple request: "sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads."

Velvet belly lantern sharks may not satisfy that demand, but perhaps they're even better: They come ready-made with glowing spines that look like lightsabers, research shows.

These deepwater sharks sport transparent spines, illuminated by a row of light-producing cells along their dorsal fins, according to a study published today (Feb. 21) in the journal Scientific Reports.

Researchers think the glowing cells help keep these small sharks from being eaten, warning would-be predators that these shark-burgers come with a side of transparent spine that would be tough to swallow. If true, this would the first fish to use light, or bioluminescence, to actively ward off predators, said study author Julien Claes, a researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

Strangely enough, these sharks also have even more glowing cells on the bottom of their bodies, which mimic the light streaming down from above, allowing them to blend in and preventing them from being spotted from creatures below, Claes told OurAmazingPlanet. "This counter-illumination prevents them from casting a shadow," he said.

Glowing on top and bottom

It's a surprising use of seemingly contradictory strategies, said Nicolas Straube, a researcher at the College of Charleston who wasn't involved in the study. "It seems [contradictory] on the first glance, but the counter-illumination is used to be invisible from potential predators attacking from below, while the spines could only be seen by predators attacking sideways or from above and it seems to be evolutionarily advantageous, to warn potential attackers beforehand: If you try to eat me, you will be pierced by these two nice spines," he said. "So, the two strategies may in fact work well in concert."

The sharks live in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea at depths of more than 560 feet (170 meters), Claes said. They usually don't get longer than about 2 feet (60 centimeters).

The researchers collected several sharks using longlines (a type of long fishing lines) off the coast of Norway; the animals are nearly impossible to raise in the laboratory, he added. [In Photos: Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures]

Lightsabers

Using computer models, the researcher found that the light from the "lightsabers" could be seen by predators from a moderate distance, but "could not be used as a lure to attract prey" due to their relative dimness, he said.

The sharks likely measure the amount of descending light through their "pineal window," or "third eye," a transparent area atop their head, Claes said. The pineal gland then produces hormones, including melatonin, that governs the amount of light produced by the cells on the bottom of their body, allowing them to blend in.

Several other species of sharks have defensive spikes, although none of them have been shown to glow, Straube said.

It's also likely the sharks use these light-emitting cells to communicate and recognize one another, Claes added. 

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks
• Images: Sharks & Whales from Above
• Image Gallery: Great White Sharks

SEE ALSO: Freediver Jumps Into The Ocean With A Great White Shark

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A rare shark couple found for the first time off the coast of Australia may force a rethink of the species' range.

Two years ago, a sport fisherman caught a pair of rare sharks off Rottnest Island in Western Australia. The duo, a male shark about 3.3 feet (1 meter) long and a pregnant female about 3.9 feet (1.2 m) long, looked different from the sharks that normally prowl the Australian waters. The female was carrying 22 pups.

The fishermen gave the sharks to ocean researchers at the University of Western Australia. After analyzing the sharks' DNA, the team concluded that the sharks were mandarin dogfish sharks, which are normally spotted only in the waters off Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand.

"After two years of thorough investigation which included DNA sequencing, the sharks were identified as mandarin dogfish (Cirrhigaleus barbifer), a species never before seen in Australia," said study co-author Ryan Kempster, a marine neuroecologist at the conservation group Support Our Sharks.

The new discovery reveals that the shark has a much larger range than previously thought. The scientists don't know exactly why the sharks strayed so far from their normal habitat.

The discovery of 22 pups was also a surprise. Scientists have only discovered two other pregnant sharks of this species, and those specimens weren't carrying so many sharks.

"Previously, it was thought that the maximum number of pups for this species was 10," Kempster said in a statement.

The analysis of the sharks was published Feb. 28 in the journal Marine Biodiversity Records.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghoseor OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks
• Images: 17 Amazing Sea Creatures You've Never Heard Of
• In Images: The Fantastic Fishes of Shark Island

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Many South Florida beaches were temporarily closed on Thursday when tens of thousands of sharks were seen swarming near the shores. 

It's not unusual to spot sharks in Florida's waters, but the stunning event comes during the height of Spring Break, when more people than usual, including college students, flock to the state's sandy beaches.  

Fortunately this is just a once-a-year occurrence, when the sharks migrate north, triggered by a change in the water's temperature.

The annual migration typically begins much earlier, in January or February, before peak beach season, shark researcher Steve Kajirua told TCPalm.com.  

Florida researchers say about 15,000 sharks were seen less than 600 feet from shore, ABC News reports. 

It's not just one species either. Researcher Derek Burkholder tells Discovery News that the cluster "consists primarily of blacktip and spinner sharks, with hammerhead, bull, lemon and tiger sharks also in the mix." 

Both blacktip and spinner sharks are typically less than 10 feet in length and are not considered dangerous to humans. Blacktips are responsible for about 16 percent of unprovoked attacks in Florida and spinners have been responsible for 13 unprovoked attacks worldwide, according to the International Shark Attack Profile.

Sharks don't actually like the taste of human flesh, so they aren't built to attack people, but they can bite which is why beaches were shut down as a precaution. 

The timing of the migration coincides with a new study that found 100 million sharks are killed each year, mostly due to overfishing. So we shouldn't get the idea that the shark population is suddenly booming — we've just gotten better at taking aerial pictures, Mahmood Shivji, director of Save Our Seas Shark Center USA, tells Discovery.  

The AP captured incredible video of the migration. Watch below:

SEE ALSO: This Is What The Inside Of A Great White Shark Looks Like

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Tens of thousands of sharks have recently been spotted near the shores of South Florida's beaches as part of their annual migration north. 

Most of the sharks are blacktip and spinner sharks, which are not considered dangerous to humans.

Blacktips are responsible for about 16 percent of unprovoked attacks in Florida and spinners have been responsible for 13 unprovoked attacks worldwide, none that resulted in fatalities, according to the International Shark Attack Profile.

But a shark is still a shark — and they can bite. 

Many beaches are closed for swimming as a precaution. 

Fishermen in Palm Beach, however, are taking advantage of this opportunity to catch sharks for science purposes, wptv.com reports.

The migration coincides with spring break, when a large number of college students and other visitors head to the beaches to party and relax. The fishermen drew huge crowds as they dragged one shark onto shore.

The yearly migration generally happens before peak beach season, but started and ended later this year.  

There's no law that prohibits fishermen from being on the beach, but it still puts beach-goers at unnecessary risk of being bit.  

The sharks are being caught for research. Once a shark is reeled in, the inside of its mouth is swabbed for bacteria that will be used to develop medicine for shark bites, according to wptv.com. The sharks are then released back into the water. 

Watch the news clip below:

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A large school of sharks has been discovered off the coast of Australia, leading officials at several Australian beaches to issue safety warnings, according to coverage by Sky News.  

The sharks are thought to be a species called bronze whalers, which have attacked humans in the past.  

The sharks were spotted by a helicopter as they were feeding on a school of baitfish only 600 meters from the shore.  

Beaches near Perth, Australia, were closed due to the frenzy.  

Here is a video of the sharks feeding on bait fish.

SEE ALSO: These Rare Sharks Are Some Of The Weirdest Animals On Earth

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The photo above is of a two-headed bull shark. The first ever found. Creepy right?

Actually, it's pretty cool. The find was just published in the Journal of Fish Biology. A fisherman found the fetus in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida in April 2011. It has two well-developed heads, the researchers discovered after putting it through an X-ray.

This anomaly is called dicephalia. These are conjoined twin sharks — it's genetically one shark that has grown two heads. When the shark was discovered, it was still alive in its mother, with several other live fetuses.

From the paper, it seems like the fisherman sacrificed the mother and removed the baby sharks, finding this two-headed one. The report says that it quickly died when the umbilical cord was cut. Its siblings survived and were released into the wild.

This two-headed trait has been found in other shark species, including the dogfish shark, ilk shark, and blue shark, among others. This is the first time they've found it in the Bull Shark though.

The mutation could have been caused by environmental pollution, the authors note in the paper:

This latter explanation is tempting given the increasing number of reports of anatomical and physiological deformities in fishes exposed to pollution emitted from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that took place from 20 April until 15 July 2010.

Assigning the observation of a single deformed specimen to that cause, especially when considering the presence of additional foetuses in the mother with apparently normal anatomy was noted by the fisherman, however, is not warranted by any information developed here.

Here's what the X-rays look like:

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Michigan State University just released a new, kind of grotesque image of the two-headed bull shark we told you about yesterday.

The shark was caught while still in its mother by a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico. It died soon after being removed from her uterus, and probably had little to no chance of surviving in the wild.

It's siblings were all normal and were released into the Gulf.

It has two distinct heads, hearts, and stomachs with the remainder of the body joining together in back half of the animal to form a single tail.

The researchers said in the paper, published in the Journal Of Fish Biology, that the two-headed feature could have been caused by environmental pollution, but in a statement from Michigan State University, study researcher Michael Wagner said:

"This is certainly one of those interesting and rarely detected phenomena," he says. "It’s good that we have this documented as part of the world’s natural history, but we’d certainly have to find many more before we could draw any conclusions about what caused this."

"Given the timing of the shark’s discovery with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I could see how some people may want to jump to conclusions," Wagner says. "Making that leap is unwarranted. We simply have no evidence to support that cause or any other."

Here's the picture:

And here's the MRI scan of the bull shark:

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A recent study in the journal Marine Policy showed that 100 million sharks are killed by humans every year. Joe Chernov was horrified by this number and decided to work with Robin Richards to illustrate how staggering the number really is.

Here is what they made, which shows the insane difference between the number of humans killed by sharks per year (12) and how many sharks are killed every hour (11,417):

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Great white sharks are thought of as apex predators who use their amazing sense of smell to hunt down and kill anything they want.

But a new study flipped that idea on its head when it documented these giant killing machines eating whale carcasses. Instead of killing prey, the great whites were actually scavenging already dead animals.

They were even quite docile about it, too. Usually when two sharks are trying to feed on the same prey, they get into an aggressive feeding frenzy. Not so when the prey is already dead. The researchers frequently saw multiple sharks feeding on the same whale carcass, sometimes multiple times.

We don't know much about the behavior of these predators, and their social lives are a mystery.

They saw huge sharks show up to feed on the whale carcass — up to 18 feet in length. Those are much bigger than the 9 to 12 footers that leap out of the water after seals.

The researchers were studying the Great Whites that live off the coast of South Africa. They published their findings in the journal PLoS ONE on April 9. More details of the sharks' feeding behavior from the Discover Magazine D-brief blog:

Observation of the scavenging events found the sharks methodically eating first the whale’s fluke and then the most blubber-rich areas of the carcass, sometimes regurgitating one bite to make room for a second, more calorically-rich morsel. This pattern is further evidence that white sharks are adept at assessing the caloric value of their food and are selective when feeding.

Here are some more images of the great whites, from the paper:

Here's the video abstract from the paper:

White sharks scavenging on whales from R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation on Vimeo.

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Most humans are pretty scared of sharks, but for the sand tiger shark, its own brothers and sisters are the ones who have the most to fear.

In one of nature's most extreme cases of sibling rivalry, the sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus) is the only shark on Earth that devours its younger brothers and sisters while still in the womb. 

"One embryo was found in its larger sibling's throat. We actually caught one that was in the process of eating another when it died," shark scientist Demian Chapman of SUNY, Stony Brook told Business Insider.

Embryonic cannibalism

Scientists were already aware of the behavior, which they call embryonic cannibalism. But Chapman and his team have found genetic evidence that the shark's murdered siblings are actually its half-brothers and -sisters, not full siblings.

These older cannibalistic hatchlings are typically fathered by a different male than the younger embryos they devour. 

The researchers' tests suggest that sexual competition among male sand tigers continues well after the sperm has fertilized the egg — their sons and daughters are left to fight it out, too.

Observations by scientists and genetic studies have shown evidence of polyandry in other shark species, but this is the first evidence that female sand tiger sharks also can carry babies fathered by multiple males at once. 

Testing for paternity

Chapman and his colleagues took DNA samples from pregnant sand tiger sharks caught in nets to keep them from the shore on the coast of South Africa. Pregnant females are extremely uncommon — it took five years to collect 15 samples.

The researchers then ran paternity tests on the embryos.

"It's the exact same sort of thing people might see on the "Maury Povich" show," Chapman said. "Then we had measurements of the embryos, so we knew which ones were cannibalizing the other ones."

The evidence confirmed that female sand tigers mate with multiple males, and because of their long gestation period, could have offspring from many different fathers. From this, Chapman and his team have hypothesized that the eggs fertilized first have a distinct advantage over later ones.

Sibling rivalry

Devouring their younger siblings gives these pups extra energy to grow very rapidly. Typically about a meter in length when they are born, their unusually large size helps keeps them from being eaten by larger sharks or fish.  

"Other sharks, when they are born are usually about 50 to 60 centimeters, so this is much much bigger," Chapman said. "There are very few predators that can tackle a newborn sand tiger."

Moreover, sand tiger sharks have two uteri, so a a healthy female is usually carrying two meter-length pups that are both separately consuming all their uterus-sharing siblings.  

Benefits of birthing cannibals

"The idea is that the females are heavily investing in very large offspring, so they are not likely to be killed by other predators," Chapman said. "So part of that investment is that these other embryos are being produced, being killed, and fueling this rapid growth."

But this startling behavior — unknown in any other species of shark — may help out Mom as well.  

Male sharks often bite females during mating, causing some nasty wounds which take energy to repair. But, resisting the males may hurt females even more.

Females are choosy about who they mate with, and the embryonic cannibalism may also allow them to accommodate later suitors without having to invest anything in the offspring of less appealing mates.

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A fisherman was reeling in a massive trophy fish only to have it shredded by two extremely aggressive bull sharks.

Watch this video from Outdoor Life's Alex Robinson. WARNING: it's very bloody.

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A group of fishermen off the coast of Huntington Beach, California, caught a giant shortfin mako shark on Monday.

They were fishing about 15 miles offshore when they caught the 11-foot-long shark. It was 8 feet around, and weighs more than 1,300 pounds. It's likely a record-breaking catch.

The three men usually go out once or twice a year searching for the giant sharks. They've caught a few 900-pounders, but never one this big. The record for this species is a length of 20 feet weighting in at 1,000 pounds. The largest taken off California by a recreational angler: 527 pounds, according to the California Department of Fish And Wildlife.

A recent study in the journal Marine Policy showed that 100 million sharks are killed by humans every year. That's 11,417 sharks per hour.

It took over two hours to reel in the shark, which took off like a shot once caught — reeling out a mile of line. The fishermen also say that at one point it jumped 40 feet out of the water.

They said they donate most of the meat to homeless shelters, but in this case they will donate it to a research organization for study, according to KTLA. Here's their interview with the fishermen:

Here are some more images:

SEE ALSO: These Rare Sharks Are Some Of The Weirdest Animals On Earth

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