most animals movement is crucial for survival, both for finding food and for evading predators. However, movement costs substantial amounts of energy and while this is true of land based animals it is even more complex for birds and marine animals which travel in three dimensions.
For the past four years, Adrian Gleiss and Rory Wilson, from Swansea University, worked with Brad Norman from ECOcean Inc. to lead an international team to investigate the movements of whale sharks, Rhincodon typus, at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. They attached animal-borne motion sensors, accelerometers, to the free-swimming whale sharks to measure their swimming activity and vertical movement, which allowed them to quantify the energetic cost of vertical movement.
The team's data revealed that whale sharks are able to glide without investing energy into movement when descending, but they had to beat their tails when they ascended. This occurs because sharks, unlike many fish, have negative buoyancy.
Why I am interested for this article?
I wanted to be a marine biologist since I was 6 years old. And for now is one of the choices that I want to study when I get to collegue. Also is one of my favorites fish species, one of the biggest and most beautiful fishes in the world of the seas. See one of this sharks swiming is one of my dreams.
What is my contribution between this article and my life?
As I said, marine biology is one of my choices to study in the future in collegues and one day I will interact with these types of species.
Area of interaction: Environment, the animal, how they interact with their environment and how they moves, or in short word its anatomies, is considered part of the environment, natural environment
Sources
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101124214717.htm
