Vegetarian shark reported in Daily Mail 18 May 2012 and Marketing Birmingham May 2012. A tropical nurse shark in the Birmingham’s National Sea Life Centre has developed a preference for lettuce, cucumbers and other green vegetables over fish. When the shark first arrived it was not eating and an ultrasound revealed it had a fish hook embedded deep in its mouth. Vets operated and removed the hook. Following the operation the shark, which has been named Florence, was seen to be eating the vegetable food provided for a turtle housed in the same tank. According to Marketing Birmingham, “Florence’s mouth is filled with razor-sharp, serrated teeth designed for demolishing fish and crustaceans. Instead she uses them for pulping broccoli and cabbage and any other greens she can steal from fellow ocean tank resident Molokai the green turtle”. The shark has such a strong preference for greens that the keepers at the Sea Life Centre have to hide pieces of fish inside cucumbers to give it extra protein. Graham Burrows, a curator at the Sea Life Centre commented that the fish “has to be well hidden, because if she realises it’s there she’ll ignore the offering and wait for the strictly vegetarian option”. Burrows also commented: “Nurse sharks do occasionally graze on algae in the wild, and we weren’t surprised when Florence first stole some of Molokai’s greens. We just weren’t expecting her to go completely veggie. We wouldn’t want her to be an embarrassment to the other flesh-eating hammerheads and black-tipped reef sharks in the ocean tank”.
Editorial Comment: Marketing Birmingham is right about sharp teeth – they are just as effective at shredding lettuce and broccoli as they are at crunching crustaceans. As we have said many times, an animal’s teeth do not tell you what it eats, but only how it eats. Genesis does not tell us directly what fish originally ate, but it is consistent with the rest of Genesis, that originally they were vegetarian like all the land animals and birds. The fact that sharks in the wild do eat algae (seaweed) is evidence consistent with the concept they once were vegetarian. Furthermore, we are told that the original world was “very good”. So any original swimmers from Adam to Apes to Ankylosaurs, must have been able to do so without fear of being eaten by sharks or other water dwelling creatures. It was only after the fall of man when corruption and violence commenced that sharks developed a taste for fish, divers and surfers, as the algae became less nutritious. After Noah’s flood, the whole world environment degenerated, and both man and animals began supplementing their diet with meat and fish. (Ref. ichthyology, diets, degeneration, marine biology)
Evidence News 7 August 2013