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Shark Babies Born in Bite
Aquarium stunned by surprise birth
By Rob Quinn
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Posted Nov 11, 09 3:30 AM CST
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(Newser)
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Never mind nurse sharks: A New Zealand aquarium appears to be home to a midwife shark. A shark there bit another in the midsection, effectively giving it a Caesarean section and causing four babies to swim out of the wound as shocked visitors looked on. Staffers found four more babies tucked inside the shark and moved all eight to a tank where they would be safe from the aquarium's stingrays and other sharks.
The babies would never have survived if they had been born at night, an expert at the aquarium told the New Zealand Herald, adding that while sharks in the wild sometimes bite each other, she had never heard of this kind of behavior before. The shark "had to bite a certain part to let them out and do it without killing" the babies or the mother, she said. The baby sharks will be released into the wild. The mother shark is expected to make a full recovery.