Goblin Shark

The Goblin Shark is a fas­cin­at­ing – not to men­tion slightly freaky-looking – creature, and this is a great video of one doing it’s thing, includ­ing some good foot­age of it’s sig­na­ture pro­trus­ible jaw.

When it’s not being used – unsuc­cess­fully – to fend off annoy­ing divers, that jaw shoots out to grab small, fast moving prey that has been detec­ted by the bat­tery of bio-electrical sense organs in the elong­ated snout. It’s much more energy effi­cient than trying to move an entire 11’ shark at the same speed, and prob­ably also helps to bring the jaws, which would oth­er­wise be obstruc­ted by the snout, into a useful biting position.

Hat-tip to Ceph­alo­pod­cast for the video. (There’s also some inter­est­ing stuff about Mega­lodon (pos­sibly the largest pred­ator the Earth has ever seen) at that link, in case you missed it in the news recently.)