When you purchase through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate perpetration . Here ’s how it work .
A athirst shark that tried to get down a spiny hedgehog fish suffocated on its supper , as the burry taste got hooked halfway into the shark ’s gorge and blocked the predator ’s gills .
The inauspicious hedgehog fish did not last the brush , either .
There was no winner in a deadly clash between a shark and a porcupine fish.
The mortal clangoring pack place on April 21 in tropical H2O near the Maldives , an island country in the Indian Ocean , and the aftermath was observed and photographed by main marine biologist Lauren Arthur after the fauna ' cadaver wash up on the beach . [ Beastly fete : Amazing exposure of Animals and Their Prey ]
Young lemon sharks are frequent visitor to the shallow lagoon in Baa Atoll , and the waters are too home to a large population ofporcupine Pisces , which are also call balloonfish or spiny pufferfish for their consistency - inflating ability . But this particular view — a dead shark with an inflated , briary fish partly protrude from the predator ’s gape jaw — was something that Arthur had never come across before , she recite Live Science in an email .
gardener at the Amilla Fushi recourse in the Maldives ' Baa Atoll get hold of Arthur — who also work at the resort — when they escort what looked like a shark thrashing around cheeseparing to the shoring . But by the sentence Arthur arrived , the shark had already choke , she explained . She identified the beast as a lemon shark ( Negaprion brevirostris ) and a hedgehog puffer fish in the Diodontidae folk , she wrote in the email .
The marine biologist who photographed the animals' remains had never seen an encounter like this before.
When blowfish Pisces are threatened , theyinflate their bodiesby quick gulp water into their stomachs , blowing up to several time their uninflated size . What in all likelihood happened was that the shark tried to swallow the fish , which then promptly blow up , hooking onto the inside of the shark ’s throat and mouth with its keen backbone , Arthur explained .
Stomach-turning behavior
shark are capable of vomiting up indigestible item or redundant food , as researcher report in 2011 in the journal Florida Scientist . In extreme eccentric , shark can even briefly expel their own stomachs , hump as " everting , " according to a report published in 2005 in theJournal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom . That field of study ’s authors even seize evidence of this literally stomach - turning behavioron video recording , in which a free - swim shark ’s stomach pops out of its mouth and then snaps back inside again .
tummy eversion in a free - live sharkfromJuerg BrunnschweileronVimeo .
But in the incident with the porcupine Pisces , when the shark examine to spit the fish out , the backward - pointing barbs dug in deeper , wedge the bloated fish inside the shark , Arthur say Live Science . The pufferfish Pisces ’s expanded trunk then blocked the flow of urine through the shark ’s gill sleeping accommodation , and caused the shark to suffocate , Arthur say .
Young lemon sharks are common in the lagoons of the Maldives.
Lemon sharks can grow longer than 10 pes ( 3 meters ) , weighing as much as 551 pounds ( 250 kilogram ) , according to theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature . But this soul quantify only about 3.6 foundation ( 1 m ) long , Arthur noted .
Whales and dolphins have met similarly unpleasant end after quaff down what looked like easy meals . In 2015 , scientist reported that two long - finned fender whales died whilefeeding on flatfishthat the whale inadvertently suck into their venthole . And in May of this year , researchers distinguish the choking death of a bottlenose dolphinfish that suffocated on amouthful of octopus .
Fascinating though this recent encounter between shark and puffer Pisces was , Arthur did n’t have equipment on paw to further analyze the doomed shark nor to remove the prey from the shark ’s gob , and there was nothing more that could be done to read the two combatants , she write in the email .
" So we buried the shark on the island , " Arthur say .
Original clause onLive Science .
