Comments

  1. Thumper; Immorally Inferior Sergeant Major in the Grand Gynarchy Mangina Corps (GGMC) says

    Love me a shark :)

    It’s walking! I’ve never seen one do that!

  5. Thumper; Immorally Inferior Sergeant Major in the Grand Gynarchy Mangina Corps (GGMC) says

    @muskiet

    My thoughts exactly :)

    We should show this video to a creationist, see what they make of it. I predict that much spluttering shall ensue.

  9. F [is for failure to emerge] says

    Well, there’s so much to love in the universe. And a lot of sharks are pretty cool, but I’m overtired with the popularity of the big gnashing pointy teeth sharks, and apex predator dinosaurs, fast cars, whatever. I mean, I thought “Fuck shark week” back when it started.

    Again, not that there aren’t super cool sharks or whatever. But popular shit is always so damn obvious, so idolized or heroified. There are billions of other cool things to love.

    But yeah, I love that shark. And it’s newly described species status. (Nitpick indeed, I’d like to banish the phrase from inappropriate use.)

  12. Ichthyic says

    How much “information” would it take to turn such a creature inti an Amphibian?

    depends on how you define information.

    Why is it walking?

    It’s a very efficient form of locomotion, if your goal is to hunt in cracks and crevices in the reef. Remember, it’s quite difficult for chondrychthyans to make sharp turns while swimming, unllike osteichthyans, who have all those bony, articulated fins to maneuver with.

  13. Ichthyic says

    …oh, and in case it was ram-jet breathing you were thinking of, actually only pelagic (open ocean) sharks do that. Just like bony fishes, btw. Tuna for example also have very weak opercular muscles and rely on mostly on ram-jet type breathing. It’s far more energy efficient if you are already swimming long distances between food patches anyway.

    most species of shark are coastal, and actually have all the musculature needed to breathe just fine while sitting still on the bottom.

  14. Ichthyic says

    I should add again, that there are a lot of species of sharks that push along on their pelvic/pectoral fins like that. most of the catsharks (no, catsharks aren’t the result of a mad scientist experiment breeding cats and sharks) do, carpet sharks, wobegong, horn sharks… and likewise, you will find a lot of bony fish that live around reefs and hunt in a similar fashion doing the same thing. frogfish for example.

    In short, convergent evolution ftw.

  15. Ichthyic says

    *sigh*

    …and yes, it’s convergent evolution, not parallel. Sharks are actually about as related to modern bony fishes as a platypus is to you; actually not even that close – there really isn’t a good parallel, since while you can still call a platypus a mammal, it’s debatable whether you actually can call a shark a “fish”.