Florida Sharks That Nurse Their Young.
The curious piglike habits of the nurse sharks of Florida have been brought to the notice of the North Carolina Academy of Science by E. W. Gudger. A third of the circumference of Boca Grande Cay, a small coral sand island twenty miles west of Key West, is bounded by a gently sloping rock bottom, on which the water half a mile from the shore is not more than four or five feet deep.
On this bottom great numbers of the sharks gather in the sun, play, and possibly feed. With seldom less than a dozen visible, as many as thirty-three have been in view at one time.
They are broad, sluggish, so little afraid that a boat may touch their fins before they will move, and they lie piled together in a confused herd, like well-fed pigs in a barnyard. Sometimes three or four swim aimlessly about.
They are harmless, with small mouths filled with small pointed teeth, and, though they are vegetarians to some degree, their chief food seems to be the young oysters, clams, crabs, and various other crustaceans.