Baby sharks are eating a surprising number of land-based birds

Baby sharks have been up to some things that weren't covered in the song.

New research published in the journal Ecology on Tuesday has found a surprising factor in the diets of newborn tiger sharks. Small songbirds, like the sparrows you might see in your backyard, have somehow ended up far enough from home to become prey to the marine predators.

Scientists performed what's called a "gastric lavage," a harmless procedure that flushed out the contents of the stomach for testing, on over 100 juvenile tiger sharks. Out of 105 specimens studied, 41 of them had partially digested birds. All of the bird remains came from North American land birds, National Geographic reported — a strange find, given that most of the sharks were tested far from shore in the Gulf of Mexico.

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The study concluded that the most likely scenario is that these birds had been caught in autumnal storms during their annual migration; this would explain why most of the birds seemed to be eaten during the fall. As for why it was mostly baby sharks eating these birds, it's possible that mother tiger sharks have taken notice of the abundance of easy prey, and specifically give birth in the area so that "the young can capitalize on the seasonal songbird scavenging opportunities," National Geographic explained.

Further research will be required to determine the exact link between tiger sharks and terrestrial songbirds, but this discovery just goes to show that nature can interact in weird, unexpected ways. Read more at National Geographic.