Feeding Behavior of Subadult Sixgill Sharks (Hexanchus griseus) at a Bait Station

This is the first in-situ study of feeding behaviors exhibited by bluntnose sixgill sharks. Bait was placed beneath the Seattle Aquarium pier situated on the waterfront in Elliott Bay, Puget Sound, Washington at 20m of water depth. Cameras and lights were placed around the bait box to record sixgill shark presence and behavior while feeding. Analysis of feeding behavior revealed that sixgills utilize a bite comparable to many other elasmobranchs and aquatic vertebrates, have the ability to protrude their upper jaw, change their feeding behavior based on the situation, and employ sawing and lateral tearing during manipulation. The versatility of their feeding mechanism and the ability of sixgills to change their capture and food manipulation behaviors may have contributed to the species’ worldwide distribution and evolutionary success.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  PLoS ONE

• Publication date

  2016-05-31

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0156730PMID 27243237PMCID 4887027
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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