The first Flexitarian shark?! - Divers for Sharks

Flexitarian, Hammerhead shark, Nature, Omnivore, Posts, Seagrass, Sphyrna tiburo

They are all carnivores. Is it true?

The term flexitarian refers to those who adopt a diet avoiding the consumption of meat, whether fish or red meat. They eat, but try not to. This option is usually related to concerns about the environment, other animals and nature in general. Because it is a flexible diet as its name implies, it is easier to reach vegetarianism or veganism when desired.

But how does this relate to sharks?!

When talking about sharks, some of the first characteristics that appear are: carnivores, predators and top-of-the-chain animals. Then there are other characteristics, such as large, dangerous and man-eating.

But in fact most sharks are smaller than humans, they are not dangerous and do not eat humans. When an incident occurs, commonly called an exploratory bite, as can be seen in this post here, rarely more than one bite happens, not devouring the human, wrongly chosen.

And we still have to remember that some specialize in eating crustaceans on the sandy bottom, and even filtering the waters for micro foods, like the whale shark for example, being far from the man-eater archetype.

They can eat grass!

And now Nature magazine breaks another paradigm! A species of hammerhead shark was found that eats, in addition to its crustaceans, algae on the sandy bottom, commonly called seagrass. A greater amount of algae has already been found in the stomach of these animals than food of animal origin.

This alone is enough to change the classification of this animal from carnivore to omnivore. That is, it feeds on both plant and animal matter.

What is your opinion on this new discovery? Are we facing a change in the behavior of these animals due to the increasing lack of food for them, due to the increasing and more evil criminal industrial fishing? Or a change in diet due to concern for marine environmental preservation?! Self protection?

Who called it flexitarian was Nature

And before you criticize me for being vegan and to say that in the future there may be vegan sharks, which would actually be a contradiction to their mission as apex predators, breaking their likely most important function in the oceans, who called him a flexitarian was Nature, ok?

And if you REALLY care about the health of the oceans and sharks, want to help but don’t know how: Wear this cause shirt and show that you are in this fight, using one of our products in the store here: diversforsharks.com.br/shop.