There’s a common conception that where dolphins roam, you won’t see sharks swimming. How accurate is the idea that sharks fear dolphins? Here’s what you should know.
If you picture a showdown between the chirpy dolphin and the toothy shark, you might imagine a pod ramming into the ocean’s iconic predator enough times to eventually kill it. To see such a predator done in by the animals we perceive as the underdogs certainly makes for a compelling role reversal.
“What we found is actually the reverse – that dolphins were actually quite afraid of sharks,” he says, “and changed their behavior in relation to when sharks were there and what habitats the sharks were in.”, so the actual behaviors stemming from any encounters between the two animals will vary. For the most part, Heithaus says a shark and dolphin would probably ignore one another.
It’s difficult to generalize how one species might react to another without knowing more specifics. Some dolphins might view sharks as fellow competitors feeding from the same schools of fish, while others might avoid sharks out of awareness that they’re predators they should fear. “False killer whales have been seen eating sharks occasionally, but after that, you know, bottlenose dolphins might occasionally kill a small shark,” Heithaus says. “To reverse it, it’s really about killer whales.”
But these numbers aren’t the definitive rate of how often sharks successfully attack and eat dolphins. These recorded instances are of shark attack survivors — in other words, sharks’ failed predation attempts. Dead dolphins aren’t observable, and living dolphins who survive attacks may not always bear scars.also supports. In order to survive, fellow pod members might band together to drive the offending shark away from the injured individual.
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