Fair warning before you click: There is a lot of blood in this video. That’s what happens when an animal that will eat something just for being annoying treats a humpback whale like it’s a breakfast buffet.
Yes, you read that headline correctly: Seventy sharks. This video was filmed by tour company Eco Abrolhos in Australia’s Shark Bay, where several tourists were looking for sharks and promptly discovered why that’s a bad idea. It’s not clear how the humpback got there; it’s more likely that it died and the sharks took advantage of a free lunch, than the sharks took the whale down. That said, tiger sharks have been known to attack humpbacks in the past and Jaws was right in that they’ll eat pretty much anything. So, when a free humpback sushi bar opened up, they went to town.
The cruise operator who helped take the footage, Jay Cox, said he’d never seen that many tiger sharks in one place, and that they were unusually docile for apex predators. They were so stuffed people could reach down and pet them, although why you’d want to reach into water filled with whale gore to pet a creature that would gladly eat you is an open question. Either way, just remember that there isn’t usually a whale buffet around, so keep your hands out of the water around tiger sharks. And hammerhead sharks. And giant sharks. In fact, just leave all sharks alone, it’s probably better that way.
(Via New Zealand Herald)