The cookiecutter shark is one of those animals that kind of makes you believe nature just likes to mess with us. Instead of killing the things it eats, a cookiecutter shark just takes a bite — leaving a neat, tidy hemispherical divot. As marine biologist Yannis Papastamatiou told reporter Douglas Main, it would be more accurate to call the cookiecutter an "ice cream scoop shark". Despite only being about 20 inches long, the cookiecutter shark will try its luck on a wide variety of prey, including animals much larger than itself. It's been known to bite great white sharks, for instance. And there is one report of a cookiecutter biting a human, although that risk is probably not something you should bother losing sleep over.

  • GawainLavers

    OwOwOwOwOw!  Mf that looks painful.

  • http://twitter.com/uptownmaker Michael Hord

    Back when I was obsessed with sharks as a kid, I read accounts of these things having taken bites out of the rubber-covered hulls of submarines as well.

  • http://profiles.google.com/mkjonese Emma Jones

    Haha! It really does just take a perfectly round bite, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t mind getting bit just for the story/scar, if it didn’t look like it hurt so damn much.

  • http://twitter.com/spadgy_OTA Will Freeman

    I’ve a story in my head from a childhood book where a cookiecutter shark got a taste for the foam (or glue underneath that foam) on a pipe providing air to an underwater science lab. My memory says that the eager cookiecutter severed the pipe, drowning several humans where they worked. I may be utterly wrong, of course, but the story was pitched as a case of, despite it’s tiny form, the cookiecutter still able to be a killing machine.

  • http://twitter.com/pishabh pishabh

    As long as it don’t double dip its chip Ima let it be

  • noah django
  • Gavin Scott
  • allium

    …that risk is probably not something you should bother losing sleep over.

    You’re right, because I AM NEVER GOING INTO THE GOD DAMN OCEAN AGAIN.