back to article Shark versus shark in Barrier Reef DEATH MATCH

Researchers have known for ages that some shark species prey on other sharks if they get the chance, but now, researchers have caught happy snaps of the killer snack. The pics, taken by researchers from the ARC Research Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, show a “carpet shark” taking in a solid meal of brown-banded …

COMMENTS

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  1. James 63

    Someone has to do it...

    If only the brown-banded bamboo shark had a fricken laser...

  2. Monkey Bob
    Coat

    It's like watching two software patent lawyers mating.

    1. Smudger 1
      Thumb Up

      Well...

      ...at least one of them is a scum-sucking bottom feeder.

  3. Charles Manning

    "Usually not fatal"

    Bollocks. Wobbegongs just don't have the strength and teeth to do much damage.

    Wobbegong bites are never fatal. Almost all cases of wobbegong bites are due to provocation by divers.

    1. Marvin the Martian

      You just wanted to find a fault in article, didn't you?

      "When people step on them" is the provocation it describes, so you just repeat the article in a vaguer way. And "usually not fatal" is what it says, being the opposite of saying "usually fatal" which would be a bollocks statement indeed, so you'd have to agree again with the article.

      Now, "never fatal" is an obviously wrong statement as nature usually finds a way if it wants to screw you over. There's documented "death by misadventure" cases where a bitten diver panics and drowns, and arguably the nipped-only but distressed diver may attract larger sharks causing a frenzy, or may get blood poisoning and a toxic shock, or whatever. In all of those (very rare) cases the wobbegong bites are ultimately fatal.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Were they playing a game?

    Were they playing rock, carpet, bamboo! I wonder as clearly bamboo should beat carpet.

  5. Jim Carter
    Coat

    It's a shark eat shark world out there...

  6. skeptical i
    Devil

    Sorcerer's Apprentice 2: Under the Briny Deep ...

    ... wherein Mickey misfires the magic wand and the detritus on the sea floor lurches to life.

    << big sharp pointy nasty teeth

  7. Falanx
    FAIL

    No recordings of it before you say?

    Go speak to the Foxs. Their life's work is a scrapbook of sharks. They've lived them.

  8. Tim Roberts 1

    actually in Australia

    " According to the researchers who caught the gruesome pics, the bamboo shark was around a METRE long, and the wobbegong around 1.25 METRES" - not meter(s)s which are instrument(s) that measure(s) something e.g current

    1. Marvin the Martian
      Headmaster

      True.

      "Metre is used as the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in all English-speaking nations except the USA, which uses meter" dixit fiddlepedia.

      1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
        Coat

        God Bless America

        The country that doesn't use the metric system, can't even spell it, and calls its units 'British' units despite their being different to the versions of imperial units that manage to still be in use in Britain, such as the pint. Oh, and puts the month before the day when writing dates, the bane of many a non-US computer programmer. I'd pretty much disregard anything that comes from there if I were you...

        1. Zaphod.Beeblebrox
          Trollface

          Date notation

          > and puts the month before the day when writing dates

          You mean like the way ISO 8601 defines the international standard date format - i.e. 2011-02-13?

          (Yes I know the average man on the street in the US doesn't use that format, instead tending to use 2-13-2012. But the format preferred in the US makes as much sense as any other non-ISO 8601 format, it is all a matter of what you are used to at that point.)

          1. mark 63 Silver badge
            Thumb Up

            Thanks Zaphod!

            I'm glad to find out that that is in fact the "international standard date format " now I can tell all my colleagues whining about the way I name and date documents to go get F**cked!!

            I did it that way because they stack up alphabetically AND chronologicly at the same time, presumably thats also why the ISO folks came up with it!

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            At least the other "other" formats at least make sense, ISO and "european" effectively being mirrors of each other; bigendian or littlendian. "Middle-endian" is just unnecessarily stupid.

          3. Clive Galway
            FAIL

            Date orders

            >You mean like the way ISO 8601 defines the international standard date format - i.e. 2011-02-13?

            YMD is a logical order. In this format, you can order alphabetically and things still sort chronologically. It also is logical in the sense that the units are in (reverse) order of unit size.

            UK format - DMY is also logical (it is simply the inverse of the above). Again, (reverse) alphabetical sorting still yields the correct chronological order. It is also in order of ascending unit size (As we do with normal numbers) so is probably the most consistent system.

            US style - MDY makes no logical sense at all. You are not even using unit sizes in order. It would be like saying 123 as "Three and One hundred and Twenty".

            1. Bill B

              It's worse than that

              The date order MDY is fine if you are just an American company. Trouble is, international companies that originate in America (and whose servers reside in America) still use the MDY format. As a company just been taken over by an American, I'm waiting for that big order due on 3/5/2012 to go horribly wrong.

            2. Jonathan Richards 1 Silver badge
              Go

              Normal == arabic

              > In order of ascending unit size (As we do with normal numbers)

              We do? If you're reading left to right, e.g. hours:minutes:seconds goes large to small, that is descending. So does 12st 10lb, or 7ft 6 in.

              In ordinary decimal writing we write, left to right, from the highest power of ten downwards, which means that you have to read through the number before you know what that power is. However, the Arab mathematicians who invented the system intended numbers to be written, as they did then and still do now, from right to left. We've just lifted their notation and dropped it into our left->right writing without changing it. In an Arabic text, if a number is encountered such as 761, it's instantly clear that there is one unit, six tens and seven hundreds, without having to count digits. Much more sensible.

              1. mark 63 Silver badge

                Re: Normal == arabic

                "dropped it into our left->right writing without changing it"

                so did we have a different system before we "lifted" the arabic system?

                or did we have no numbers at all?

  9. thefutureboy

    I wonder...

    ...how long it took the photographers to :

    a) Catch a bamboo shark

    b) Find a carpet shark

    c) Stuff one into the other

    I'm sure Photoshop would've been quicker.

  10. John Robson Silver badge
    Joke

    If they never observed motion...

    How do we know the little guy wasn't trying to suffocate the big guy...

    1. Marvin the Martian
      Paris Hilton

      Because he had his gills stuck inside the larger shark?

  11. deshepherd

    Reminds me of a story of a zoo where two snakes were in the same tank and keepers didn't notice that when they put a couple of dead rats in at feeding time that both snakes started at opposite ends of the same rat, met at the middle and the larger snake opened its jaws a bit further than the other and started to consume it as well.

  12. yoinkster
    Thumb Up

    Heh, reminds me of the (very old) "Snake eats Gator then explodes" story on the BBC that I'm sure everyone has seen:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4313978.stm

  13. CD001

    Too many letters...

    Eucrossorhinus DAsypoGON

  14. Grubby

    Maybe

    Maybe the bamboo shark is wearing a wobbegong hat...

    I just like the word wobbegong, I'm going to get it into every other sentence today in my meetings.

    1. Monkey Bob
      Angel

      Bonus points for inserting a gratuitous cockwomble.

  15. Napoleon
    Coat

    Sharks feeding on sharks ? Not really new ...

    Just sit at a sales meeting and you will witness this ... (no scuba diving needed ... ).

  16. perlcat
    Joke

    Had me all excited there.

    When I read the caption about carpet munching.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Clearly that bamboo shark needs to work on its technique!!

    Proper carpet-munching requires practice!! Then we can be regaled with el Reg headlines about carpet-licking sharks!!

    Ok, I am out of here! Paris.....because......well......do I really need to say it??

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