9 Shark Species Have Evolved to Walk and Crawl Out of the Water to Become Top Predators in Shallow Reefs
Where do humans come from? According to evolution, they came from ape-like creatures that descended from trees.
Where did apes come from? They came from the mammals that rose after the extinction of dinosaurs.
Where did mammals come from? They came from early marine fish that crawled onto land and evolved.
So, you've roughly figured out that all life on land today came from the ocean.
Of course, there were also some who found land too difficult and went back into the sea, such as dolphins and whales, who are now living happily and wonderfully in the ocean.
Now, are there any fish that have come ashore to live? I know that seafoods often come ashore, but they are used by humans to make a living, while the seafoods themselves have never seen them.
However, recently, an international team of scientists from the University of Queensland, Australia, and the United States and Indonesia, has discovered that some sharks in Australia and New Guinea have learned to use their fins as flippers and crawl onto land during low tide to play and forage.
Sharks are a primitive and ancient species, possibly because they had too comfortable a life in the ocean. According to fossil records, of the 1200 shark species that appeared in the past 400 million years, most of them didn't improve themselves much, as if they were lagging behind the entire Earth's passage of time, living in a memory of the ancient ocean.
However, this research surprisingly discovered that in the coastal waters of northern Australia and New Guinea, there are nine species of wobbegong sharks that use their chest fins and belly fins to 'walk' in shallow reefs to find crabs, shrimp and small fish as prey when the tide goes out, becoming top predators in the intertidal zone.
Researchers believe that these sharks were able to walk on land in low-oxygen environments because they remained in an isolated area millions of years ago, due to widespread inbreeding, the rate of mutations increased, thus evolving into a new species. Another reason is that with the changes in the ocean, including sea level rise, currents and temperature changes, wobbegong sharks had to quickly adapt to this dynamic environment, thus evolving this 'heavenly' ability, becoming a nightmare for small crustaceans and mollusks — thinking that escaping to the shore could avoid the terrifying predators of sharks, but they continued to evolve and chase to the shore.
Of course, as the top predator species on Earth, we humans don't need to be scared and stunned just hearing that sharks are going ashore, worrying about our ecological niche. These sharks have an average length of less than one meter, posing no threat to humans. If they are delicious to eat, they would easily be caught by humans on the shore and become a favorite in their bellies. A species that doesn't use tools and doesn't stand upright will not pose any threat to humans; even if they do, humans will 'invite' them to the zoo and laboratories, such as chimpanzees and monkeys.
