The largest fish in the sea is officially female!

    What is the absolute largest fish known so far? A new study has ranked female whale sharks as the longest fish

    He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

    What is the absolute largest fish known so far? To hold the undisputed primacy in the sea is the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) with its nine meters in length that it can reach. For almost a decade, however, the "battle of the sexes" had remained open: who is the greater the male or the female? Now a new study has confirmed that female whale sharks would reign supreme as fish larger than the sea, managing to reach an average of 14 meters in length.





    Mark Meekan, first author of the article published in Frontiers in Marine Science and a fish biologist at the Australian Institue of Marine Science, found that some whales even reached 18 meters:

    "They are absolutely huge - like the size of an articulated city bus - but even if they are large, they grow very, very slowly: about 20, 30 cm per year"

    The team has, in fact, monitored 10 specimens of whale sharks for 54 years, recording more than 1.000 measurements with special "stereo" cameras installed on a frame that you move when you are underwater and that they manage to calibrate - a bit like the our eyes - the two individual video recordings and thus obtain a very accurate measurement of the shark. A feat made possible by a unique "fingerprint" of spots on each whale shark that can be used to identify individual fish.

    The largest fish in the sea is officially female!

    @Andre Rerekura/Australian Institute of Marine Science

    Marine biologists have also found that increased female size increases can be beneficial for reproduction. Although only one pregnant whale shark has been documented, it has been found that, unlike most sharks that give birth to between 2 and 12 pups, the whale shark can reproduce up to 300 of them:

    "So these giant bitches are probably getting big due to the need to carry lots of pups." said Dr. Meekan.

    A discovery that could have implications in the conservation efforts that are being made: whale sharks, in fact, have been listed as endangered species since 2016, especially threatened by targeted fishing:

    "If you are a very slow growing animal and it takes 30 years or more to reach maturity, the chances of disaster happening before you have a chance to reproduce are pretty high."



    The discovery, according to Dr. Meekan, would also explain why whale shark gatherings in tropical regions are made up almost entirely of young males.

    A research that truly rewrites what was known until now about the growth of whale sharks, with the hope that it will help in their preservation.

    Fonti: Australian Institute of Marine Science /  Frontiers in Marine Science

    READ also:

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    • In the open sea, he is filmed riding a whale shark (amid laughter)
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