PLOS Science Wednesday: Hi Reddit, my name is Simon and I discovered that thresher sharks use their tails to hunt prey and published the results of the study in PLOS ONE – Ask Me Anything!

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Hi Reddit,

My name is Simon Oliver and I am a marine ecologist at the University of Chester. My research focuses on using integrated approaches to understanding animal behaviour in the context of their use of habitats, ecological services, cooperation, and predator-prey interactions. I am particularly interested in the behavioural ecology of oceanic sharks in response to their cleaning, hunting, and migration strategies, and applying associated behavioural knowledge to address conservation issues.

I am the lead author of a 2013 paper in PLOS ONE titled “Thresher Sharks Use Tail-Slaps as a Hunting Strategy”. Unique to their taxa it has long been suspected that thresher sharks use their tails to corral and stun their prey. Although some empirical evidence for this unusual hunting strategy has been quantified from controlled experiments, descriptions of the behaviour and its association with the capture of live prey have remained vague. While we were studying the cleaning ecology of pelagic thresher sharks in the Philippines, my co-authors and I came across a site where they could be regularly observed hunting sardines. Knowing that we had stumbled upon the Holy Grail of thresher shark behavior, we designed a simple set of experiments show beyond doubt that thresher sharks really do hunt with their tails.

I will be answering your questions at 1pm ET -- Ask Me Anything!

Don’t forget to follow the Thresher Shark Project on Twitter @s_tsrcp.

">PLOS Science Wednesday: Hi Reddit, my name is Simon and I discovered that thresher sharks use their tails to hunt prey and published the results of the study in PLOS ONE – Ask Me Anything!