Science magazine demonstrates that sharks can and will eat literally anything, up to and including songbirds that live miles inland … but migrate over the Gulf of Mexico:
To find out whether this phenomenon was more widespread, the team surveyed the stomach contents of baby tiger sharks from 2010 to 2018. The team caught the sharks with a rod and reel and then stuck plastic tubes down their throats before releasing the animals back to the ocean.
Forty-one of the 105 tiger sharks the researchers examined had bird feathers in their stomachs. The least digested feathers could be identified by local ornithologists, but some were so far gone they required DNA analysis. The scientists identified wrens, sparrows, and even doves in the gullets of all 41 sharks, totaling 11 different species, none of which were marine, they report today in Ecology.
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Original research is published here.