Can one imagine a more hostile creature than the great white shark? The more ferocious the predator, the less it seems to require companionship — at least, that is how it appears at first glance.
Great white sharks can only be seen together when their prey is too large. Nevertheless, social connections are not alien to sharks. An article published in the journal Biology Letters reports that sharks sometimes form long-term alliances. Researchers attached special sensors to the dorsal fins of the sharks that recorded video, tracked direction of movement, speed, depth of immersion, and other parameters, as well as detected the presence of other sensors nearby, meaning other sharks.
Most often, when sharks encountered each other, they quickly dispersed in different directions. However, there were cases when they spent significant time in each other's company, patrolling their hunting grounds, and sometimes a joint patrol lasted over an hour. This indicates a certain interest in each other, and if not friendship, then some form of cooperation is clearly present. Moreover, the number of acquaintances varied among different sharks: one shark managed to interact with twelve others over thirty hours, while another met only two in five days. In most cases, sharks prefer to interact during joint swims with individuals of their own sex: females swim with females, and males with males.
Observations of the sharks were conducted off the coast of Guadalupe Island, where the water is exceptionally clear. Prey can be seen from a distance, but the prey also notices the shark in advance. The authors of the study suggest that a "friendship for an hour" helps sharks optimize their hunting: together, they find it easier to drive prey, even if it has already sensed danger.
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