It turns out that a small shark and people have something in common that hadn’t been imagined before. Both people and bonnethead sharks are omnivores, meaning we include vegetables in our diets.
After a four-year study, researchers at UC-Irvine reported Wednesday that bonnetheads not only eat sea grass but have the enzymes necessary to digest it. This makes the bonnethead the first known omnivorous shark. It had been previously known the sharks consumed sea grass, but it wasn’t known if they could digest it.
Bonnethead sharks live in Southern California’s coastal waters as well as in warmer waters around the East Coast of the U.S. This small member of the hammerhead family is typically two-to-three feet in length.
