As Mark Meekan bobbed among swells in the Indian Ocean, he spotted a giant shadowy figure moving through the water. The tropical fish biologist dove to meet the gentle giant — a whale shark — and took some samples of its skin. Swimming alongside these aquatic giants is nothing new for Meekan, who works at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Perth. But “having an encounter with something that feels like it’s from prehistory is an experience that never gets old,” he says.
Averaging around 12 meters long, the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the largest living fish species on Earth and among the most mysterious. Since these sharks spend the majority of their lives in the deep ocean, Meekan says, analyzing the chemical makeup of their tissues can be hugely powerful for learning more about the animals’ fundamental biology (SN: 7/14/20) and behavior — including what they like to eat.
The skin samples that Meekan and colleagues collected and analyzed reveal that whale sharks, long thought to be strict meat-eaters, also eat and digest algae. The findings, described July 19 in Ecology, add to a growing body of evidence that whale sharks deliberately eat plants, making them the largest omnivores on Earth. The previous record-holder, the Kodiak brown bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi), averages about 2.5 meters in length.
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