鲨鱼和鳄鱼共享鲸鱼尸体
While traveling near the remote Montgomery Reef along the northwest coast of Australia, a luxury charter boat came upon the rare sight of tiger sharks and a crocodile sharing a meal together, dining on a huge humpback whale carcass.
"There was a crocodile eating the side of the carcass as well as the tiger sharks, and a few other sharks," Jeremy Tucker, skipper of the Great Escape adventure cruises, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
"It was really interesting to see how the crocodile and the tiger shark were interacting."
The sharks and crocodile can be seen biting into the whale's fins and body, and basically leave each other along as there was plenty of eat.
Tucker, 55, described the encounter that occurred recently off Kimberley while heading toward the Prince Regent River:
"We came across this dead humpback whale floating upside down – the cause of death unknown but it had obviously been dead for a while as the smell on the downwind side was pretty horrendous," he told the Mirror.
"As we decided it was worth a closer inspection, we noticed a number of tiger sharks feeding on the carcass as well as the saltwater crocodile.
"So I put the drone in the air and captured a few pictures and some footage.
"The area that the whale was in is subject to 12-meter tides, so there are many crocodiles and tiger sharks there."
Tucker has been visiting the Kimberley region for 30 years and this is only the second time he's seen such a sight. The time before Tucker witnessed a crocodile sunbathing atop the dead whale while tiger sharks fed on it.
"Unfortunately that was before drones," he told the Mirror.
Tucker said on the return trip they noticed the whale carcass had washed ashore onto Montgomery Reef where a number of crocodiles were feeding on the whale.
"There was a crocodile eating the side of the carcass as well as the tiger sharks, and a few other sharks," Jeremy Tucker, skipper of the Great Escape adventure cruises, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
"It was really interesting to see how the crocodile and the tiger shark were interacting."
The sharks and crocodile can be seen biting into the whale's fins and body, and basically leave each other along as there was plenty of eat.
Tucker, 55, described the encounter that occurred recently off Kimberley while heading toward the Prince Regent River:
"We came across this dead humpback whale floating upside down – the cause of death unknown but it had obviously been dead for a while as the smell on the downwind side was pretty horrendous," he told the Mirror.
"As we decided it was worth a closer inspection, we noticed a number of tiger sharks feeding on the carcass as well as the saltwater crocodile.
"So I put the drone in the air and captured a few pictures and some footage.
"The area that the whale was in is subject to 12-meter tides, so there are many crocodiles and tiger sharks there."
Tucker has been visiting the Kimberley region for 30 years and this is only the second time he's seen such a sight. The time before Tucker witnessed a crocodile sunbathing atop the dead whale while tiger sharks fed on it.
"Unfortunately that was before drones," he told the Mirror.
Tucker said on the return trip they noticed the whale carcass had washed ashore onto Montgomery Reef where a number of crocodiles were feeding on the whale.
论文简述：
Scavenging is an important component to the overall ecology of consumers in virtually all ecosystems on Earth. Given theenergetic benefits of foraging on these resource subsidies, opportunistic predators will adjust their behaviors accordinglyto maximize access. One of the many consequences of large-scale scavenging opportunities is species interactions that arerarely observed in nature. Here we describe the first published record of predatory sharks (tiger sharks, Galeocerdo cuvier)and saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) foraging together in space and time, as documented on a large whale carcassoff Western Australia. We report on and discuss the behaviors of the sharks and crocodiles in the hope of shedding new lighton the interactions between apex predators that are rarely seen together, but may overlap under specific contexts.
论文地址：
https://pan.baidu.com/s/1AU79MDbhmKeHHQdg8FMDNg
Scavenging is an important component to the overall ecology of consumers in virtually all ecosystems on Earth. Given theenergetic benefits of foraging on these resource subsidies, opportunistic predators will adjust their behaviors accordinglyto maximize access. One of the many consequences of large-scale scavenging opportunities is species interactions that arerarely observed in nature. Here we describe the first published record of predatory sharks (tiger sharks, Galeocerdo cuvier)and saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) foraging together in space and time, as documented on a large whale carcassoff Western Australia. We report on and discuss the behaviors of the sharks and crocodiles in the hope of shedding new lighton the interactions between apex predators that are rarely seen together, but may overlap under specific contexts.
论文地址：
https://pan.baidu.com/s/1AU79MDbhmKeHHQdg8FMDNg