Not all sharks live in open water and look really ‘sharky’. Many shark species have a more exotic look and wait for their prey in lair. One of those is the tasseled wobbegong. When prey swims by, it opens its large mouth and swallows it. And that prey can sometimes indeed be a shark…
This tasseled wobbegong (Eucrossorhinus dasypogon) was encountered by researchers on the Great Barrier Reef. It swallowed a bamboo shark.
On the Barrier Reef, it is protected, but in the other regions where it lives, North Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, it is not, and was therefore listed as Near Threatened on IUCN’s Red List, due to suspected significant population declines and predicted to continue within a large proportion of its range.
This wobbegong feeds on bottom fishes and invertebrates and has an average length of 1,80 m.