Sharky Midwife

Staff at a New Zealand aquarium were astonished to find baby sharks spilling from a wound in a female school shark’s stomach after she was bitten by another shark. Visitors at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World were reportedly stunned by the incident. They found a female with a large hole in her stomach swimming next to four baby sharks. “Kelly Tarlton’s aquarist Fiona Davies said it was common for sharks to take chunks out of each other, even in the wild, but she had never heard of anything like this. ‘It had to bite a certain part to let them out and do it without killing them [the babies] or her [the mother].’ Ms Davies said the unusual delivery had probably saved the baby sharks’ lives. Staff did not know the mother was pregnant and, had she given birth naturally, most likely at night, the babies would have been eaten by adult sharks and stingrays before staff could rescue them,” reports the New Zealand Herald.