Massive great white shark that had just eaten a dolphin found with no liver, torn apart by an even bigger predator
A 15-foot-long great white shark found washed up on a beach in South Africa had just eaten a dolphin — before it was itself ravaged by an even bigger predator, in a first recorded in the region.
The shark was found on Nyara River Mouth on the Eastern Cape on May 29 — after trophy hunters had already illegally stolen its sought-after teeth, according to Marine Biologist Alison Towner.
Photos showed its largely intact carcass on the sand — with another of a “freshly consumed” 6-foot-6 common dolphin that was found “cleanly severed into four pieces” inside the shark, the scientist observed.
“The shark’s liver was missing, with only a small piece of tissue remaining,” Towner said of the results from a full necropsy the same day.
The culprit, the scientist reported, was “killer whale rake (teeth) marks” found on the shark’s head.
The testing “confirmed killer whale predation on a white shark in the Eastern Cape for the first time,” Towner wrote, calling it a “significant new observation” in the region.
Although a first on the Eastern Cape, it was the 14th confirmed case of white shark predation by killer whales recorded in SOuth Africa as a whole in the last nine years, the scientist noted.
The dolphin, meanwhile, was “cleanly severed into four pieces,” as seen in the photos also shared by Towner.
According to Towner, the shark’s teeth were removed overnight illegally by trophy hunters, so the specimen could not be donated as a museum exhibit.
The shark’s remains were buried at a remote site after researchers removed tissue and muscle samples for “ongoing research on white shark genetics and diet.”
