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Glow In The Dark Wobbegong Shark Attack Ends Badly For Unsuspecting Fish

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 02:49 PST, Nov 9, 2014

Riveting slow motion footage reveals one of the oceans strangest predators, the wobbegong shark, as the glow-in-the-dark fish stealthily hides before springing upon its unsuspecting prey.

An unusual animal in many regards, the wobbegong shark glows fluorescent under ultra blue lights, a quality it shares with many other marine animals, according to Shark Attack News. Part of the carpet shark family, wobbegong sharks possess a unique coloration which allows them to blend in with the sandy and rocky areas of the ocean floor, where the predator lies in wait for passing prey.

A new video of a wobbegong shark, produced by BioPixel, reveals the predator’s ambush strategy. Camouflaged not only by its sandy skin tone, but also by unique dermal flags that make it nearly indistinguishable from rock formations, the wobbegong shark is able to easily fool prey animals simply by holding still. In the video, an unlucky fish discovers this fact the hard way, as it is completely unaware of the shark’s presence. The fish swims right up to the shark, yet before it can realize that it is in danger, the predator swiftly attacks, swallowing the unlucky fish whole.

The footage is just one of many slow motion videos captured by BioPixel, an Australian film company specializing in natural history and animal behavioral sequences. Founded by cinematographer Richard Fitzpatrick and IT entrepreneur Bevan Slattery in 2013, BioPixel’s YouTube channel features a variety of animal footage captured with high speed cameras, including a great white shark breach filmed at 1,000 frames per second. As the Inquisitr has previously noted, this style of attack involves the shark striking a prey animal vertically, often throwing its entire body violently out of the water in a stunning display of predation.

Wobbegong sharks can be dangerous not only to small fish, but also other sharks, as a group of researchers operating near the Great Barrier Reef discovered in spectacular fashion several years ago. As Livescience noted, the team witnessed a wobbegong shark attacking and preying on a three-foot-long bamboo shark. While they did not witness the end of the attack, the divers were sure the bamboo shark had been killed by the wobbegong. Possessing a jaw that can dislocate, as well as backward facing teeth that allow them to grasp relatively large prey, wobbegong sharks pose a unique danger even to other fish as large as themselves.

[Image: BioPixel via YouTube]

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