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.
Little was know about great whites鈥� 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 鈥渁nchor points鈥�.
When the team fed their results into a computer model, it suggested that great whites don鈥檛 attack at random but from well-defined anchor points or lairs (Journal of Zoology, ). 鈥淭his wasn鈥檛 where the seal concentration was greatest,鈥� says Hammerschlag. He suspects it was a balance between prey detection, competition with other sharks and environmental conditions that allow them to launch a quick vertical attack where the water is clear enough to see the seals.
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