Great white sharks are at the top of the ocean food chain and have very few natural predators. Still, life isn’t all well for the apex predator, who still has to deal with the rough and tumble of others of his kind.
However, like many other shark species, great white sharks have the power to heal some pretty horrendous wounds in a surprisingly short amount of time and with near-surgical precision.
A large white named “Crescent” was recently spotted off the coast of Massachusetts in the United States with a dorsal fin that appeared to have been stitched back together.
In 2017, Crescent’s dorsal fin was pictured torn in half.
Researchers at the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy shared the stunning repair on Twitter last week.
The #WhiteSharkWednesday has the ability of shark healing. Great white shark “Crescent” was spotted with some serious injuries with a split dorsal fin in 2017. The research team saw it in 2022 and could see its dorsal fin “locking” back into place! Unbelievable! pic.twitter.com/oTyRl6GlgI
— Great White Shark Conservation (@A_WhiteShark) February 8, 2023
Although it’s not clear what snapped the shark’s fin, these injuries are often the result of other great whites.
When sharks mate, it can become aggressive. Often the male will bite the female to keep her close.
“Since most sharks have sharp teeth, this bite causes significant wounds in the female, which must heal without becoming infected – hence the ability to heal wounds efficiently,” says shark researcher Mahmood Shivji of Nova Southeastern University in Florida told news week.
But Crescent is a man. You can tell by the long appendages sitting near its pelvic fin in the full body picture above. These structures are called klaspers and are used to it cling to the females during copulation.
Maybe that’s why female great white sharks can have skin twice as thick as male. As man-to-man combat is kinda raremale sharks may have the ability to heal their wounds as a byproduct of female defences.
Or maybe the self-healing power of male great whites is a holdover from their ancestors. According to ShivjiEfficient wound healing is thought to be a common trait of many other sharks and rays on Earth, suggesting it has ancient roots.
Although the wound healing abilities of some species have been studied, blacktip sharks are known for it exceptionally good at healing traumatic injuriesusually inflicted by other sharks.
Extensive reports also suggest that whale sharks can recover quickly from extensive injuries to their skin and blood vessels, which unfortunately they do more frequently with ship strikes. In just 35 days, researchers say The species can heal 90 percent of tissue damage.
In comparison, reef sharks can Heal battle wounds almost completely half a meter long (two feet) long within six months.
As with great whites, many of the wounds found in female reef sharks are due to copulation. Actually scientists Use the appearance of these gradually healing wounds to predict when mating events might have occurred in the past.
Despite the remarkable defenses, the evolution of shark skin is not well understood. Sharks are elusive creatures and few studies have directly examined their wound healing abilities in a controlled environment.
Actually the Great White Genome was only examined lately in 2019. Adjustments for wound healing were made clearly visible in the results.
Such genetic flexibility coupled with mechanisms to correct potentially harmful genetic flaws could be part of what helps great whites heal wounds also avoid cancer. The species can live up to 70 years.
“There is a tremendous amount to be learned from these highly successful evolutionary marvels,” Shivji said told Business Insiders in 2019.
“Their function and design are 400 million years of extremely finely tuned evolution.”
