Great White Sharks' Incredible Self-Healing Capability Captured in Photos [LOOK]

With few natural predators, great white sharks are at the top of the ocean food chain. But, life is still not all roses for the apex predator as they must contend with the roughhousing of other predators.

Nonetheless, great white sharks, like many other shark species, have a self-healing ability to recover from some rather gruesome wounds in an astoundingly short period of time and with near-surgical precision.

Crescent the Great White Shark Reappears With Healed Dorsal Fins

According to Science Alert, a great white shark known as 'Crescent' was recently spotted off the coast of Massachusetts, USA, with a dorsal fin that seemed to have been patched back together.

Crescent's dorsal fin was seen torn through the center in 2017. Then last week, researchers from the Atlantic White Shark Conservation posted the remarkable repair job on Twitter.

While it is unclear what tore the shark's fin in the first place, similar injuries are frequently caused by other great whites. When sharks mate, they might become violent. Males will frequently bite females to keep them close.

Mahmood Shivji, a shark researcher from Nova Southeastern University in Florida, told Newsweek that most sharks have strong teeth and as they bite on their partners, it results in injuries that must swiftly recover without becoming infected.

Crescent, on the other hand, is a male shark. The lengthy appendages near his pelvic fin in the full-body picture indicate this. These projections, known as claspers, are utilized to cling to females during copulation as per Shark Trust.

Perhaps, this is why female great white sharks have skin that is twice as thick as males. Since male-on-male combat is infrequent, male sharks may be able to repair their wounds as a result of female defenses.

Wound-Healing Capabilities of Sharks

The ability of male white sharks to cure themselves is a relic of their predecessors. Shivji believes that quick wound healing is a common attribute across many different sharks and rays on Earth today, implying that it has ancient roots.

While the wound healing skills of few species have been researched, a 2020 research revealed that blacktip sharks are known to be especially excellent at recovering from catastrophic injuries inflicted by other sharks.

Furthermore, detailed investigations showed that whale sharks may heal quickly from major damage to their skin and blood vessels, which are sadly becoming more prevalent as a result of ship hits. Researchers claim in a 2021 study that the species may recover 90% of tissue damage in as little as 35 days.

Reef sharks, on the other hand, may virtually entirely recover fight wounds half a meter (two feet) long in six months. As Science Alert reported, many of the wounds observed on female reef sharks, such as great whites, are caused by copulation. Scientists use the appearance of these gradually healing scars to anticipate when mating activities occurred in the past.

What Humans Can Learn From Sharks' Self-Healing Ability

In 2019, Shivji told Insider that they successfully sequenced the entire genome of the great white shark. It contains the genetic material of the organism, like its genes and DNA, revealing that these sharks have 4.62 billion rungs on their DNA ladder and 41 pairs of chromosomes compared to the 23 pairs of humans.

This new genome might offer a slew of genetic secrets that explain why these animals are so adept at mending and disease resistance. Scientists seek to get fresh insights into the mechanisms underlying these mending abilities by sequencing the shark's DNA. There's even a chance that the results can help humans combat sickness in novel ways.

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