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Twogreat lily-white sharksseem to be following each other all the way from the southeast U.S. to Canada . Great white sharks(Carcharodon carcharias ) are usually alone animals and move around immense distance alone . So the pair ’s 4,000 - mile ( 6,400 kilometers ) swim together has left scientists vex .
" White sharks lead a very solitary existence,“Robert Hueter , a shark scientist at the nonprofit organization OCEARCH that tag the pair , said in a video posted to Facebook . " We do n’t really wait to see these lily-white shark stay together . "
Great white sharks are normally solitary animals, so the discovery of two males appearing to swim around together has surprised scientists.
The juvenile great Elwyn Brooks White — dub Simon and Jekyll — were tagged with tracking devices by researchers off the seashore of Georgia in December . And over the months that follow , they ’ve stayed close to one another on their way north .
OCEARCH tagssharkswith detector that knock their location when the sharks spend prison term near the control surface of the water . researcher can use this data to follow individual sharks across the ocean .
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The data show thatSimonandJekyllhave been generally following the same route along the coast — though they have n’t always been in the exact same office at the same time . In early March , for example , both sharks were pinged off the glide of Wilmington , North Carolina . But by early May , Simon look to have reach Long Island , New York , while Jekyll was around southern New Jersey .
Yet by early July , both shark were again pinged in the same location off the coast of Nova Scotia , and by the midsection of the month they were both in the Gulf of St. Lawrence , the outlet of the Great Lakes . Jekyll has n’t pinged since mid - July , but Simon pinged as recently as Aug. 11 , off the slide of New Brunswick , Canada .
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Hueter said in the video that he ’s " never seen anything quite like this " and noted that scientist have taken tissue samples from both shark and will check to see if they might be tie in .
scientist still do n’t amply understand shark ' social demeanor , Hueter told theWashington Post . But researchers are now looking into how these marine predatory animal interact with each other .
Last year , for example , researcher found that item-by-item white sharks might sometimes appease close to other white sharksto avail find food . " Our unexampled grounds suggest that whitened shark are indeed societal animals , ” one of those investigator wrote inan articlefor The Conversation .
