Young sharks learn from friends Lemon shark / LiveScience.com
(LiveScience) Sharks might be able to learn new skills just by
watching their friends' behavior, a new study finds. In
experiments at the Bimini Biological Field Station in the
Bahamas, a group of researchers corralled 18 juvenile lemon
sharks in a large holding pen and trained some to learn a
reward-based task. If the sharks entered a certain area of the
pen -- called the indicator zone -- a target would be exposed on
the other side of the pen. Then, if the sharks swam to the
target and bumped it, they were given a piece of fish. In the
next phase of the experiments, some untrained sharks were paired
with those that had learned how to get the reward, while another
naive set was paired with sharks that had not learned the task.
The researchers then tested to see if the inexperienced sharks
had picked up their peers' behavior. They made the task slightly
easier, exposing the fish reward once the sharks entered the
indicator zone. The researchers fou