This is why people want to grow up to be scientists . To rule out more about the morphological difference in shark teeth and how this affects the way different sharks hunt and kill , scientist have prepare a new mode to simulate a naturalistic shark bite : Glue shark tooth onto an galvanic saw .
Humans have long been thrilled by sharks’toothy smiling . fortuitously , these day , due to shift attitudes and apprehension , we are more likely to be fascinate by them rather than afraid , although it seems there is still so much we do n’t know .
There are more than 400 different species of shark , and each of them has uniquely form teeth : triangular , penetrating and serrate , and sparse and spiky . Despite being aware of this , scientists have had difficulty getting up closelipped and personal with a shark while it ’s chomping away to see just how these different shaped tooth really cut down and sting through tissue .
Researchers at the University of Washington decided to study why shark tooth are shaped differently and what biological advantages each anatomy has , by testing how they do under as naturalistic conditions as possible . This is where the glue and saw come in .
" When you have all these different tooth shapes , there should be some operable reason . That issue was essentially worrisome to me , " said elderly writer Adam Summers , a UW professor of biological science and of aquatic and piscary science , in astatement . " It seemed belike what we were missing is that sharks move when they eat . "
As sharks often shake their heads as they bite , Summers and his squad realized that finding a way to replicate how the different tooth do when moving from side to side would be essential to their work .
To sham this movement , they append three unlike type of shark teeth – tiger , silky , and bluntnose sixgill – to a reciprocating power witness and had it slit through compact chunk of Alaskan salmon at the same speed a shark shake its chief during an attack .
" Sure enough , when we cut through salmon , different teeth issue otherwise , " summertime articulate . " We found a means to recognise between this huge morphologic deviation we see among shark teeth in nature . "
gamey - amphetamine television of the edit out setup using a blade with tooth from a silky shark ( Carcharhinusfalciformis ) on Salmon River . University of Washington
The results , published in the journalRoyal Society Open Science , demonstrated that shark tooth differences come down to how effective to devour their fair game reckon on how that quarry ’s tissue behaves .
Both the tiger and silky sharks ’ tooth damp comparatively rapidly over a few tests . As their known prey includes middle - sized marine mammals , turtles , and birds , all of which expect sharp tooth to bite into pieces , the researcher think this could think of these sharks supercede previous obtuse tooth with sharp new 1 every time they wipe out prey .
The bluntnose sixgill tooth , on the other manus , did n’t trim down as well but also did n’t leaden as quickly as the others , which could mean they do n’t need to slice up as much as they swallow their prey whole .
" There ’s this tradeoff between acuteness and seniority of the tooth boundary , " Summers explain . " It looks like some sharks must replace their teeth more often , giving them a consistently sharp tool . "
The squad believes this is the first study of its kind to mime the means sharks hunting and kill . " It is really significant to test biologic materials at strain rate that are high enough to mime how the predator and fair game tissue paper would really behave in real life,“saidco - author Stacy Farina , a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and an adjunct lector at Shoals Marine Laboratory .
" We asked ourselves , how do we safely and effectively move these teeth back and forth quickly ? " Farina append . " The immediate and unclean way was , paste them onto a power power saw . It was a bare solution to a complicated problem . "
