One of a kind: scientists managed to catch a viper shark, about which they know almost nothing

Scientists have managed to capture and display the creepy, elusive viper shark known as Trigonognathus kabeyai. The creature was discovered over 35 years ago, but it still shocks with its appearance. Writes about it Cursor Info.

Photo: IStock

For the first time this creature was recorded by a bottom trawler in 1986 off the coast of the island of Shikoku (Japan). Since then, people have rarely encountered this secretive deep-sea shark, which occasionally appears near Japan, Taiwan and Hawaii.

Trigonognathus kabeyai can be up to 54 centimeters long. The animal has a long black body, a mouth with a hundred needle-like teeth, and beady blue eyes, for which it is often compared to the Marvel comic book character Venom.

Viper dogfish (Trigonognathus kabeyai) is a type of shark from the deep-sea. They can eject their jaws out of their mouths to catch prey.

(Photo: Brynn Devine) pic.twitter.com/VWyWujhLdd

— Weird Animals (@Weird_AnimaIs) February 28, 2020

These viper sharks swim at a depth of about 600 meters and rarely come to the surface, which is why scientists know little about them. More than 35 years ago, only a few individuals were found.

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But in 2018, scientists from the Taiwan Research Center caught 5 viper sharks at once during one of the expeditions. Four of them died before rising to the surface, and the last one died already in the laboratory.

However, even in a situation of such a small amount of research, modern science still has valuable data on these terrible creatures. It is known that Trigonognathus kabeyai is the only extant species of the genus Trigonognathus of the Etmopteraceae family. It is distributed in the Northwest and Central Pacific.

Initially, the new species was assigned to the family Squalidae, which at that time was used to classify all members of the order of katran sharks. In 1992, based on a morphological study, these species were assigned to the subfamily Etmopterinae, which taxonomists now recognize as a separate family of Etmopteridae.

The position of the genus Trigonognathus within the family Etmopteridae remains unclear. Morphological and molecular data generally support the division of the family into two clades, one containing Etmopterus and Miroscyllium and the other containing Centroscyllium and Aculeola. The genus Trigonognathus is estimated to have formed 14 million years ago during the Middle Eocene. At that time, it was represented by the now extinct species Trigonognathus virginiae, whose fossilized teeth are found in the Lutetian of the department of Landes, France. These remains are virtually identical to fossilized teeth of modern Trigonognathus kabeyai found in northeastern Venezuela and dated to the late Miocene and early Pliocene.

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viper shark has elongated body, the lower part of which is covered with numerous photophores. It reproduces by ovoviviparity and mainly feeds on bony fish. Thanks to its impressive mouth, this animal can swallow whole fish of very large sizes.

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