Shark experts scratch heads over new arrival

[dArKeR]

Coburg, Germany - German biologists are scratching their heads over a mysterious shark lurking in their aquarium: it does not appear to belong to any of the 405 known species of shark.

Peter Faltermeier, director of the aquarium in the southern town of Coburg, said the 70-centimetre-long female arrived in a tank of water several weeks ago from Vienna's Schoenbrunn Zoo, where no one had been sure either how to describe the fish.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1093174742224B265

[salvorhardin]

1. No pictures?

How soon until the Discovery channel does a 6 part series about this? ;-)

[Boomer]

2. Still no pictures...

But a little bit more background on the shark:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1073840.html

<snip>

The 27-inch-long animal has inflexible eyes, unusually large teeth and hair.

According to the zoologists, it also "hops" through the water and moves its fins like a whale, instead of swimming the way sharks normally do.

Dr Ekkehard Wolf from the Austrian zoo that let the valuable specimen go without realising its worth, said: "We are trying to find out where it came from originally. It was sold privately to an Austrian pet shop a few years ago.

"It sold it to a fitness studio in Upper Austria that was destroyed in floods. But the shark was rescued and taken to an animal shelter where it lived for a short while before it was passed on to us, and it's taken us two years to find it a home. We did not realise it was unique."

</snip>

[Kellanved]

3. pic

[alarimer]

4. sharks don't have hair

This sounds like a hoax to me.

[Boomer]

7. You mean we didn't *know* they could have hair

>> Sharks don't have hair <<

This one does, so obviously our knowledge of sharks was flawed and incomplete.

[alarimer]

8. One of the characteristics that separates mammals taxonomically

From other animals is the presence of hair. No other group of animals has hair. The other two characteristics are the presence of three middle ear bones and milk production. It
is probably not true hair but some sort of modified scales or something.
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Mammalia.html

[Dogmudgeon]

5. It's the long-lost KRAUTFISH!

As prophecied by Nostradämmerung, the famous German "Sleepwalking Prophet".

I saw it on the Internet. So it has to be true.

--bkl

[Boomer]

6. More on "Cuddles" the hairy shark

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/29/wshark29.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/29/ixworld.html

The 70cm (28in) female shark, nicknamed Cuddles, is covered in hairy bristles, has big nostrils and an extra gill that set her apart from the 405 known shark species.

According to the dozens of marine biologists who have flocked to inspect Cuddles, her fins are smaller but more muscular than those found on similar-sized sharks. She claps them together in order to hop across the bottom of her tank, in the Sea Star aquarium in Coburg.

"She leaps over the seabed like a frog rather than swimming gracefully like most sharks," said Peter Faltermeer, a marine biologist and the aquarium's curator.

The scientists, he said, were confounded. "They were all left totally baffled and we were left delighted," Mr Faltermeer said. "They couldn't classify her. Cuddles is unique and she belongs to us."

<snip>