Tried something new today. We drew two animals with the prey they readily consume. Note that this is not representative of their diet portions nor are the animals drawn to scale.

The whale shark, aka the largest fish in the ocean, eats some of the ocean’s smallest animals. Open-ocean crustaceans like krill and copepods are often caught in its gill rakers (Clark & Nelson, 1997; Duffy, 2002). Whale sharks have also been known to target fish and coral spawning events, where they slurp up an innumerable amount of eggs (Norman, 1999; Heyman et al., 2001).

White sharks are famous for their diet of charismatic marine creatures, such as dolphins and seals (Brodie and Beck, 1983; Corkeron et al., 1989). These predators may look ungainly, but thanks to their streamlined shape and incredible muscle mass, white sharks can launch their entire out of the water at about 35 km per hour (Martin & Hammerschlag, 2012)! Scientists found that white sharks hunt bat rays as well. Over a dozen stingers of the bat rays were found inside the shark’s mouth (Observation by Shark Research Committee, 1985).

Written and drawn by Garfield Kwan