Meet the Cookiecutter Shark, a Bizarre Predator With a Signature Circular Bite

Being able to find some of the most amazing sea animals sometimes means that we must go further than the surface of the water. For these researchers, they dove down deep into the Bermuda Triangle trenches. They make some amazing discoveries, like the cookie-cutter shark. 

Cookiecutter Shark in the Bermuda Triangle

The next YouTube video posted in this blog post takes us to the Bermuda Triangle, located in the North Atlantic Ocean. This video was documented and shared by the National Geographic YouTube page. 

Check Out The Incredible Video Below!

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They are going to enter the Bermuda Triangle, which they share “is inhabited by all sorts of strange sharks, one of them is the cookiecutter shark, which lives in the Tongue of the Ocean.” 

Cookiecutter Shark Sighting 

The video starts by showing the depths of the Bermuda Triangle and the deep trenches contained there. The narrator comments, “We have no idea what’s going on down in the deep trenches here. Anything could be happening in the deep sea. It’s one of the final frontiers for human exploration, even more interesting, in my opinion than exploring space.” 

Next, we see their divers going down to see what type of animals they will find. One of these divers is Joe Romeiro, who is an underwater cinematographer (who is a person who is in charge of photography and videography.) Underwater, we see a variety of sharks that make themselves at home in the Bermuda Triangle. We see sharks such as the megamouth and the sharpnose sevengill.

In addition to these, we see the cookie-cutter shark. The narrators warn that although it has a sweet name, this shark is anything but sweet. They dive into how small this shark is and how bold it is when attacking animals much larger than they are. Let’s take a look below!

Cookiecutter Shark Facts

The cookiecutter shark is a small shark that reaches only between 14-22 inches long. We can see its mouth open if we pause the video at 2:31. And this brings us to the way it’s called the cookie-cutter shark. When it bites its victims, it is known to leave a cookie-cutter-type bite in its prey. 

According to Live Science, “Cookiecutter sharks leave a very distinctive scar when they bite; their specialized jaw allows them to “scoop out a hemispherical plug of flesh from their prey,” according to the study. The sharks’ name comes from the uniformity of the bite, which looks “like you took a cookie cutter to some dough,” Papastamatiou said. “‘Ice-cream-scoop shark’ would be technically more accurate, but it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.”

The photo featured at the top of this post is © NOAA Observer Project / public domain – License / Original