Grey nurse sharks are not shy when it comes to flirting. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Sharks aren’t exactly known for being romantic. They do have their own way of flirting, though, and it’s not all that gentle. Rare footage shot at an aquarium in Australia shows grey nurse sharks putting down a serious vibe.
“It’s like an underwater tango,” said Patrick Nelson, Aquarist at SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium in a statement. “We’ve captured incredible footage of these magnificent creatures tumbling and twirling in the water. It’s a rare and exciting sight that showcases their natural courting behaviors.”
Although they’re not known for being romantics, they are known for their teeth. Those teeth come into play during the nurse shark’s courting. The footage shows the sharks biting each other and twisting and twirling around in their tank. According to IFLScience, the males will often flip the females over and trigger something called tonic immobility, in interesting phenomenon that appears to send the upside down shark into a sort of trance.
“Shark flipping is a tactic that scientists have used to paralyze their predatory research subjects. Doing so brings on a state of ‘tonic immobility’ resulting in an almost hypnotic state that renders the shark completely still for almost 15 minutes and can be done on a variety of sharks,” IFLScience explained. “This state of immobility is an incredible tool for scientific research, and skilled scuba divers have been recorded doing this to sharks as large as a tiger shark.”
