The Great White Shark Diet

Great white sharks are popularly known to be man-eaters. Pop culture often portrays them in films and in novels to be dangerous creatures, always craving for human flesh whenever they see one. Science disagrees with this, however.

New research into the diet of great white sharks has revealed that their stomachs contains a wide variety of species that live on the seafloor, implying these movie villains spend more time foraging along the seafloor than anyone realized. That said, we'd still recommend you avoid skinny dipping at night on beaches commonly frequented by sharks.

"The stereotype of a shark’s dorsal fin above the surface as it hunts is probably not a very accurate picture,” said lead author Richard Grainger, a PhD candidate at the Charles Perkins Centre and School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney, in a statement.

“Understanding the nutritional goals of these cryptic predators and how these relate to migration patterns will give insights into what drives human-shark conflict and how we can best protect this species,” added Dr Gabriel Machovsky-Capuska, an adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Perkins Centre and a co-author of the study.

More details about this over at IFL Science.

(Image Credit: Olga Ernst/ Wikimedia Commons)