Great white sharks are the serial killers of the ocean

摘要

Great white sharks have more in common with serial killers than just their fearsome reputation. Unlike most predators, their hunting strategies are far from random. When deciding where to launch their attacks, they balance prey availability with factors such as finding a good hiding place - just as serial killers do.rnLittle was know about great whites' hunting strategies except that they are more successful in low-light conditions. So Neil Hammerschlag of the University of Miami, Florida, and his colleagues used geographical profiling, a tool more commonly used by police tracking down serial killers, to investigate how sharks hunt for Cape fur seals off Seal Island in South Africa. The team used the locations of 340 shark attacks to determine whether they were striking at random or setting out from particular "anchor points".