{"id":63284,"date":"2010-07-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/suckers-of-the-shark-world\/"},"modified":"2010-07-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T00:00:00","slug":"suckers-of-the-shark-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2010\/07\/suckers-of-the-shark-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Suckers of the shark world"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. – July 7, 2010 – In the world of sharks, you\u2019re either a sucker or a biter, and in the classic movie Jaws \u2013 which celebrated its 35th anniversary last month<\/a> \u2013 the star of the show was most definitely a biter. <\/p>\n


\nAt a meeting in Providence this week of shark biologists from around the world, University of Rhode Island Biological Sciences<\/a> Professor Cheryl Wilga<\/a>, who studies how shark jaws move and the pressures they produce, will explain her latest insights about the differences in feeding styles. <\/p>\n


\nAccording to Wilga, bamboo sharks are the vacuum cleaners of the shark world, what she calls \u201cthe champion suction feeders. They have a really big mouth area and a very small mouth opening. Think about a turkey baster, with that big bulb and a small opening that pulls fluid up into the mouth. That\u2019s how suction feeders eat.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nGreat white sharks, on the other hand, have a huge mouth opening and can\u2019t generate suction. That wide mouth makes them excellent biters.
\nThe difference, she said, has to do with the skin between the upper and lower jaw. \u201cSuction feeders have skin between their jaws, just like we do, and you can\u2019t really even see their jaws when they open their mouth. White sharks don\u2019t have skin there, so they can open their mouth wider to bite.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wilga said that while suction feeders are mostly restricted to eating small things, they have an advantage over sharks that grasp their prey in their teeth. <\/p>\n

\u201cSuction feeders like nurse sharks and bamboo sharks don\u2019t have to get as close to their prey to feed,\u201d she said. \u201cThey can sneak up on their prey and suck it in very quickly. Nurse sharks hang around coral reefs where small fish hide in the crevices of the coral and think they\u2019re protected, but the sharks can suck them out of the crevices. Or the fish will be swimming along and think they\u2019re far enough away from a shark, but they\u2019re not.\u201d <\/p>\n

Great white sharks and other bite feeders have to be able to swim fast and come right up and grab their prey between their jaws, she explained. <\/p>\n

At the conference in Providence, Wilga will report on her research comparing sharks that feed in very specialized ways with those that use a more generalized approach. <\/p>\n

\u201cBamboo sharks are specialists at suction feeding; sometimes they can suck in their prey in 60 milliseconds. Dogfish are generalists; they can use suction but they\u2019re pretty slow at it, and they can also bite. Skates don\u2019t generate suction at all, but they\u2019re good at biting, though they take a lot longer than the others. They\u2019re pickers \u2013 they grab their food with their jaws and bring it into their mouth, which takes a longer time.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wilga will also give a presentation at the conference to honor Professor Karl Liem, her unofficial graduate advisor at Harvard University and the curator of ichthyology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology<\/a>, who died earlier this year. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was key in my appointment as an associate researcher at Harvard and was a big champion of women scientists,\u201d Wilga said. \u201cHe was one of the earliest researchers in the area of functional morphology of fishes, he was a beloved teacher, and his fish class was always standing room only.\u201d\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. – July 7, 2010 – In the world of sharks, you\u2019re either a sucker or a biter, and in the classic movie Jaws \u2013 which celebrated its 35th anniversary last month \u2013 the star of the show was most definitely a biter. At a meeting in Providence this week of shark biologists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}