ZSL Publishes Report Showing Great White Sharks Are Serial Killers

By Victoria Picknell 

London, UK - What do great white sharks have in common with serial killers? Refined hunting skills, according to a paper published today in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology.

A team of US-based researchers have found that sharks hunt in a highly focused fashion, just like serial criminals.

Using the same methods used in criminology, the authors demonstrate how geographic profiling, a mathematical technique usually used to hunt serial criminals, can be used to study the hunting patterns of great white sharks.

The authors observed the location of 340 shark attacks and used the data to locate the sharks' anchor point. Interestingly, the study also showed that younger sharks exhibited less focused search patterns and were less successful hunters, perhaps because larger sharks excluded them from the best areas. 

"Geographic profiling is an interesting new way to study patterns of animal foraging, and especially predation" says Dr Steven Le Comber, an expert on geographic profiling at the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. "Shark hunting patterns are extremely difficult to study and the work here will have important implications for our understanding of the ways in which predators hunt their prey." 

Notes 

The Journal of Zoology, published by the Zoological Society of London, is a leading scientific journal publishing hypothesis-driven papers that advance our knowledge of animals and their systems. For further information please visit http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0952-8369
 

(1) Geographic profiling was developed by former Canadian beat cop Kim Rossmo, now Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University, and head of the Centre for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation. It uses the locations of a series of linked crimes (murder, rape or arson) to predict the location of a criminal's anchor point - usually a home or place of work. Doing this allows police to prioritise lists of suspects by concentrating on those living or working in certain areas. This is extremely useful, since in most investigations police will have too many, rather than too few, suspects: for example, police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper murders in the UK in the 1970s and 80s amassed a total of 268,000 names and 4.5 million vehicle registration numbers. Geographic profiling has been highly successful in criminology, and it is now routinely used by law enforcement agencies around the world, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Scotland Yard.
 

Founded in 1826, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is an international scientific, conservation and educational charity: our key role is the conservation of animals and their habitats. The Society runs ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, carries out scientific research at the Institute of Zoology and is actively involved in field conservation overseas. For further information please visit www.zsl.org.

To view London Zoo's web page on Zoo and Aquarium Visitor, go to:  http://www.zandavisitor.com/forumtopicdetail-709-ZSL_London_Zoo

Photo Credits:  Neil Hammerschlag - University of Miami