| Ommatokoita | |
|---|---|
| |
| On a Greenland shark | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Copepoda |
| Order: | Siphonostomatoida |
| Family: | Lernaeopodidae |
| Genus: | Ommatokoita Leigh-Sharpe, 1926 |
| Species: | O. elongata
|
| Binomial name | |
| Ommatokoita elongata (Grant, 1827)
| |
| Synonyms[1] | |
| |
Ommatokoita is a monotypic genus of copepods, the sole species being Ommatokoita elongata.[1] However, a specimen has been found on the skin of the great lanternshark (Etmopterus princeps), which has been assigned to the genus but not the species.[2]
Ommatokoita elongata is a 30 mm (1.2 in) long pinkish-white parasitic copepod, frequently found permanently attached to the corneas of the Greenland shark and Pacific sleeper shark.[3][4][5] The parasites cause severe visual impairment, but it is thought that the sharks do not rely on keen eyesight for their survival.[4] It was speculated that the copepod may be bioluminescent and thus form a mutualistic relationship with the shark by attracting prey, but this hypothesis has not been verified.[6]
YouTube Encyclopedic
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Rare Encounter with Greenland Shark - Adam Ravetch
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Why The Greenland Shark Often Goes Blind And Survives
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How The Greenland Shark Survives 500 Years In The Arctic Waters
Transcription
The Greenland Shark is probably one of the most bizarre creatures on the planet. It is actually a deep-water shark and it is prehistoric. It has an extra gill slit than the modern day shark so it comes form another era. It lives at thousands of feet, on the bottom, so very few people know about it. The scientists tell you that it is probably one of the largest populations of sharks on the planet because there is no real commercial fishery on it and they live so deep so nobody really comes in contact with them. The Greenland shark is known to live up to 200 years old, so imagine if they could talk! What knowledge they would have. The other bizarre thing is there is these parasitic worms that actually somehow find the shark in the water column, grab onto the tail and then, like mount Everest, they hike up and down these scales all the way to the eyeball of the shark and then they latch onto it and they spend their entire lives on the eye and they feed of the tissue of the eye. This renders the shark blind however the shark does not need to really see in order to feed cause it lives in dark deep waters anyhow and it has an incredible sense of smell and that's how it can find its prey and probably also has the ability to pick up on vibrations. The Greenland shark in my opinion wasn't that dangerous. He was very docile, kind of swam around slowly. Scientist and the Inuit have found, in their stomach, seals so there is this idea that they somehow can hunt a seal. Their mouths are more like a nurse shark. The teeth are made for crunching bottom creatures so they probably don't go after big prey but if they can get their mouth around a seal they actually have an extended jaw that comes out and it locks on and then they do this flipping action. They will roll like an alligator rolls and they roll left, they roll right, they roll left, until they grab a piece out of the animal. So for a human we did not feel endangered because it was not biting us, it was just kind of swimming by. It is just a fabulous piece of the puzzle and the arctic ecosystem and exciting that we can swim with it, find one and document it.
References
- ^ a b Walter TC, Boxshall G (eds.). "Ommatokoita Leigh-Sharpe, 1926". World of Copepods database. World Register of Marine Species. Retrieved 25 April 2022.
- ^ Hogans, W. E.; Brattey, John (1986). "Ommatokoita sp. (Copepoda: Lernaeopodidae) parasitic on a demersal shark, Etmopterus princeps, from the northwest Atlantic Ocean". Canadian Journal of Zoology. 64 (4): 833–835. doi:10.1139/z86-124. Retrieved 2021-07-28.
- ^ Borucinska, J. D.; Benz, G. W.; Whiteley, H. E. (1998). "Ocular lesions associated with attachment of the parasitic copepod Ommatokoita elongata (Grant) to corneas of Greenland sharks, Somniosus microcephalus (Bloch & Schneider)". Journal of Fish Diseases. 21 (6): 415–22. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2761.1998.00122.x.
- ^ a b Benz, George W.; Borucinska, Joanna D.; Lowry, Lloyd F.; Whiteley, Herbert E. (2002). "Ocular lesions associated with attachment of the copepod Ommatokoita elongata (Lernaeopodidae: Siphonostomatoida) to corneas of Pacific sleeper sharks Somniosus pacificus captured off Alaska in Prince William Sound". The Journal of Parasitology. 88 (3): 474–81. doi:10.1645/0022-3395(2002)088[0474:OLAWAO]2.0.CO;2. PMID 12099414.
- ^ Martin, R. Aidan (October 4, 1998). "Greenland sharks and parasites".
- ^ Berland, Bjørn (1961). "Copepod Ommatokoita elongata (Grant) in the eyes of the Greenland shark—a possible cause of mutual dependence". Nature. 191 (4790): 829–30. Bibcode:1961Natur.191..829B. doi:10.1038/191829a0. S2CID 4262630.
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This page was last edited on 13 June 2024, at 16:59