Tuesday February 27, 2024
Interesting Engineering —
A new study published on February 26 has shed light on how striped marlin, renowned as some of the ocean’s fastest predators, coordinate their turn-taking hunting strategy to avoid injuring each other.
These majestic creatures, known for their lightning-fast attacks on prey schools, can remarkably switch colors rapidly.
This newfound understanding gathered by a team of researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin highlights how rapid color changes play a pivotal role in enabling striped marlin to synchronize their hunting efforts, ensuring efficient prey capture while minimizing the risk of collisions or conflicts among individuals.
Researchers found that the “attacking marlin ‘lit up’ and became much brighter than its groupmates as it made its attack before rapidly returning to its ‘non-bright’ coloration after its attack ended,” said Alicia Burns, who led the study at the university, in a statement.