A new study has found that venomous sharks are amongst the hundreds of wildlife species that now inhabit the River Thames.
It turns out that we're gonna need a bigger... notebook to take stock of the variety of creatures dwelling in the London waterway, as CNN reports that a survey organized by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has revealed "positive news" for its wildlife and ecosystem recovery, with seahorses, eels and seals also having been discovered in the Thames.
The river's "health check" found a shiver of sharks beneath the surface of the water, with three different species recorded as part of the survey, including tope, starry smooth-hound and spurdog — the latter of which has dorsal fins with venom-secreting spines that can cause pain and swelling in humans if they were to come into contact with the mildly toxic substance.
Tope sharks are long and slender just like spurdogs but they have distinctive long snouts. They can grow to be 6 foot in length and can weigh up to 106 pounds, while starry smooth-hounds are smaller in size, reaching up to 4 feet and 25 pounds. Starry smooth-hounds can be identified by the speckled white spots typically scattered on their upper flanks and back.
This comes more than six decades after the 215-mile river was declared "biologically dead." The report, however, warned of threats from pollution and climate change, with the water's temperature rising by 0.2°C a year on average. Sea levels are also on the up, with the tidal section of the Thames having risen at some points by 0.17 inch a year on average since 1990.
Scientists are keen to conduct further research of the River Thames to better understand the reason why the number of fish species found in the estuary's tidal areas has shown "a slight decline" over the years, but who knows what else they may discover. Just last year, a new gelatinous species of ctenophor was found during a dive off the coast of Puerto Rico.
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
Continue reading...
It turns out that we're gonna need a bigger... notebook to take stock of the variety of creatures dwelling in the London waterway, as CNN reports that a survey organized by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has revealed "positive news" for its wildlife and ecosystem recovery, with seahorses, eels and seals also having been discovered in the Thames.
The river's "health check" found a shiver of sharks beneath the surface of the water, with three different species recorded as part of the survey, including tope, starry smooth-hound and spurdog — the latter of which has dorsal fins with venom-secreting spines that can cause pain and swelling in humans if they were to come into contact with the mildly toxic substance.
Tope sharks are long and slender just like spurdogs but they have distinctive long snouts. They can grow to be 6 foot in length and can weigh up to 106 pounds, while starry smooth-hounds are smaller in size, reaching up to 4 feet and 25 pounds. Starry smooth-hounds can be identified by the speckled white spots typically scattered on their upper flanks and back.
This comes more than six decades after the 215-mile river was declared "biologically dead." The report, however, warned of threats from pollution and climate change, with the water's temperature rising by 0.2°C a year on average. Sea levels are also on the up, with the tidal section of the Thames having risen at some points by 0.17 inch a year on average since 1990.
Scientists are keen to conduct further research of the River Thames to better understand the reason why the number of fish species found in the estuary's tidal areas has shown "a slight decline" over the years, but who knows what else they may discover. Just last year, a new gelatinous species of ctenophor was found during a dive off the coast of Puerto Rico.
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
Continue reading...