What are cookiecutter sharks? The boat is attacked by glow-in-the-dark monsters

Uncommon But True

He is Marc Lallanilla

What is attacking nuclear submarines, which glow in the dark and look like a “pencil with teeth”?

Give up? It is a type of shark known as the cookiecutter shark, so named because its vampiric teeth can take 2 inch round pieces from large prey.

Sharks attracted worldwide attention this week by floating a (defunct) inflatable catamaran in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

That trip was cut short when a school of cookiecutters took the boat by mistake for a whale – on their menu, along with dolphins, bluefin tuna and other, larger sharks like great whites.

“They’re a really cool type of shark. This tragic event gave us an opportunity to learn about them,” Professor Jodie Rummer, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Australia, told the Guardian.

“They’re called the cookiecutter shark because they don’t swallow their prey,” Rummer added. “They’re just taking little bites out of them.”

It gets weird, Rummer said: “They’re also bioluminescent — they glow.”

Cookiecutter sharks (Sistius of Brazil) grow as large as 20 inches in length. Because they are small and live in deep water, they don’t get much attention or academic study.

Sharks usually feed deep in the ocean during the day and near the surface at night, so they spend most of their lives in the dark.

Parasitic species, cookiecutter sharks “have strange and terrifying teeth that they use to grab their prey and twist to bite a circular piece,” Daryl McPhee, associate professor of natural sciences at Bond University, told Australia’s ABC.

“They basically look like a pencil with teeth,” McPhee added.

And they’re not picky eaters: Cookiecutters have been known to cut submarine cables and sonar equipment from nuclear submarines.

The ReefQuest Center for Shark Research says that in the 1970s, “many Americans were forced to return to base because of cookiecutter damage to their neoprene-lined sonar housings, which caused sound-transmitting oil to leak and provided fairly large subs.” ‘not seeing.’

“The U.S. Navy must have had bad visions of an unknown enemy weapon, instead of a demon.”

But do they eat people? Also, they are not picky, and have been known to try a bit of human flesh here and there before moving on.

A cookiecutter shark attack was reported in Hawaii in 2011, when the victim was swimming in deep water at night. Another attack occurred in 2017 off Magnetic Island in Australia. Both victims survived.

But a real attack would be much more painful, because sharks travel to – and eat – schools.

“If you can imagine, they can’t see very well and it’s dark. They saw a leaking catamaran with a large soft and flat surface. ‘Is it a whale? Let’s take a look. Oh, yes, it tastes like rubber. It’s not me,’” Rummer said.

That’s probably why small sharks are able to swamp a 30-foot inflatable catamaran. “This kind of thing goes around in schools, and if they all go through this breathing system thinking it’s a possibility of food, that’s where [you get] damage as there are multiple bites,” he added.