Word of advice: Be careful who you’re roommates with. It can be a shark-eats-shark world out there, a saying that proved painfully true for an unfortunate 5-year-old male shark who was eaten by his 8-year-old female tankmate last week.
The fishy feast took 21 hours to devour, but the meal is still not over. According to Reuters, "The aquarium said the tail is expected to stay in the shark's mouth for about four to five days. Unable to digest the creature, it will then will regurgitate it after about a week.”
While many may liken this case to cannibalism, that’s technically incorrect. The sharks actually belong to two different species: The female is a sand tiger shark at 2.2 meters long (7.2 feet long) and the male is a banded houndshark at a smaller 1.2 meters (4 feet) in length.
Officials referred to the event as a “turf war” gone awry. "Sharks have their own territory,” said an aquarium official to Reuters. "However, sometimes, when they bump into each other, they bite out of astonishment.”
Whether the event took place because of the confines of the tank, or if it was purely because the shark was startled, is unknown. There have been cases of sharks eating sharks in the wild. Needless to say, be careful who you choose to roommate – or tankmate – with.
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