Surprise with vegetarian-like sharks

The Bonnethead shark is famous for being a good "killer" but American scientists discovered they enjoyed the sea grass - a plant that lives on the ocean floor.

Usually sharks cannot consume plants but survive but the Bonnethead sharks have proved their special taste through a 10-year study of the University of California in Irvine (Orange County, California - USA). .

A Bonnethead hurriedly took away the fruit - (Photo: THE INDEPENDENT).

Not only is a stray individual like the vegetarian shark Lenny in the "Shark Family" cartoon, it seems that even a Bonnethead family has a habit of adding plants to their meals.

According to lead author Samantha Leigh, they found quite a few plants in the stomach of sharks of this species, most of them seagrass. In young sharks, the rate of vegetarian dishes is higher - up to 60%.

The team also conducted experiments to apply a diet rich in green vegetables for some sharks. They were fed with 90% seagrass and 10% squid within 3 weeks. Blood tests confirm that these sharks digest and extract the nutrients from seaweed very well and are completely healthy after the experiment.

They also found that the reason Bonnethead had a different diet from other sharks: they possessed a unique digestive enzyme called β-glucosidase, which could destroy cellulose in plants. The most interesting thing is that Bonnethead is known as an assassin whose rank is shark.

The research results have been recently reported at the annual Biology - Synthesis and Comparison Conference, which took place in the United States.