Not sure how David Attenborough would explain this one: a trio of sharks have been filmed having a threesome for the first time.
The large leopard sharks were filmed getting freaky in the Pacific between New Zealand and Australia by a marine biologist.
After spotting them on the bottom, he waited on the surface until they decided the time had come to get to know one another better.
Describing the mesmerising moment, Dr Hugo Lassauce said: ‘I waited an hour, freezing in the water, but finally they started swimming up.
‘It was over quickly for both males, one after the other. The first took 63 seconds, the other 47.’
Despite being brief, the males were tired after the encounter, as they ‘lost all their energy and lay immobile on the bottom while the female swam away actively’.
The three sharks, seen in French territory New Caledonia, were all about 2.3 metres long, so they were no mere minnows.
Their species is listed as endangered, and there is little information on their natural mating behaviour in the wild.
For this reason, and for it being a unique behavioural observation, scientists were excited by the discovery (not for other reasons: get your mind from the gutter).
They say it may help them learn how to better inseminate sharks artificially and ‘rewild’ the species in countries including Australia.
Researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia said in an article in the Journal of Ethology that leopard sharks in captivity have been observed pentetrating females for up to five minutes, so this was significantly speedier.
They added that the ‘lack of interest from the male toward the female after copulation coupled with the female swimming to separate areas is common in many shark species’.
Senior Research Fellow Dr Christine Dudgeon, a co-author of the paper with Dr Lassauce, said: ‘It’s surprising and fascinating that two males were involved sequentially on this occasion.
‘From a genetic diversity perspective, we want to find out how many fathers contribute to the batches of eggs laid each year by females.’
For more of a deep dive into the fascinating world of biology, you might want to read how gay sex between animals ‘evolved for an important reason’, that most male macque monkeys are bisexual, or perhaps about about the tarantulas recently found with ‘massive penises’ in the Horn of Africa.
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