9781422276792

Thresher sharks use their long tails to hunt their prey. There are historical myths that thresher sharks have worked together with swordfish to kill whales, but most marine biologists agree that this is just a legend. The legend says that a swordfish would position itself underneath the whale with its sharp bill pointing upward, while the thresher shark attacked from the top, impaling the whale with the swordfish’s bill. The main reason that marine biologists believe that this is unlikely is not because the thresher shark lacks the intelligence to initiate such an attack, but because both thresher sharks and swordfish lack the jaws that would be necessary to eat a whale after the kill. The current, common name of thresher shark comes from the way the shark uses its tail to hunt, whipping it around to kill prey, much like farmers use threshers to slice their crops. SIDEBAR mating season. Threshers tend to migrate to follow warm masses of water. This migration is even more likely when they are young. WHERE DID THE NAME “THRESHER SHARK” COME FROM? The thresher shark’s scientific name, Alopias vulpinus , comes from the Greek word for fox. A few people still refer to thresher sharks as fox sharks today. Thresher sharks do not look like foxes—they got this name because even hundreds of years ago, there were many myths about their clever behaviors (such as figuring out how to free themselves from fishing lines and temporarily swallowing their babies in order to protect them from potential predators), and those who believed these myths likened these actions to those of a clever fox.

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