Rare Shark Fetus Shocks The World

Photo Credit: Pisces Fleet Sportfishing

This is not a joke . We repeat—this is NOT a joke.

A cyclops shark was found three years ago off the coast of Mexico, and to be honest, the crew here at Awesome Ocean couldn’t resist sharing this incredible picture with you all.

In mid-2011 a commercial fishing crew caught a dusky shark off the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico and when they cut the shark open, they realized the shark had been pregnant. Ordinarily, this would have been no big deal to career fishermen. But here’s the catch (pun intended): the shark fetus was albino and had only one large eye centered in its face.

The Pisces Fleet Sportfishing blog first shared the almost-unbelievable photo and it went viral faster than the latest internet-cat video. Many people had the same first thought you probably did, that this photo definitely wasn’t real. But scientists have confirmed that this cylophean specimen is legitimate and the optical tissue was functional, though the animal likely wouldn’t have survived in the wild.

While the shark looks like a marine version of Mike Wazowski, it is the result of the prosencephalon (forebrain) failing to separate into two hemispheres during embryonic development. As the brain failed to separate, only one optic lobe formed, leading to only one eye. This condition often results in miscarriage, and those that survive to birth typically die within a day. As the shark would have needed to defend itself from the moment it was born, it would not have lasted very long.

“This is extremely rare, as far as I know less than 50 examples of an abnormality like this have been recorded,” Felipe Galván-Magaña of the Mexican Institute of Sciences stated on the blog of Pisces Fleet.

While the shark embryo has been made available to scientists who wish to study it, Pisces Fleet is keeping the preserved embryo. This is so stinkin’ cool, we can’t say we blame them.

Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/cyclops-shark-was-found-three-years-ago-coast-mexico#jcTF5WcCgW4JfJZb.99