The Shark Species That Can Chomp a Chunk Out of Anything—Even Apex Predators
This essay is excerpted from Cake Zine’s fourth volume, “Tough Cookie.” Cake Zine is an independent print publication exploring society through sweets.
Recently in Australia, fishers reeled in a glistening blue swordfish riddled with egg-shaped holes, as if the fish had been mutilated by a melon-baller. The wounds were fresh—open portals into pale pink flesh that still oozed blood as the swordfish slid across the deck and died. Many creatures in the ocean would eagerly chomp on a swordfish, but only one boasts a bite like this: the cookie-cutter shark. This swordfish was likely mangled by a whole group of these sharks, each gouging out a chunk of flesh as their meal was drawn toward the boat. Although the cookie-cutter shark is named for the perfectly cratered shape of its bite, the moniker is only accurate if you imagine a spherical cookie, such as Mexican wedding cookies, rum balls, or maybe a misshapen macaron. But even these cookies are too textured to stand in for the shark’s eerily smooth bite. (Unfortunately for pedants, melon-baller shark carries far less charm.)
At first glance, the cookie-cutter is an unassuming sort of shark. It lacks the blunt face of a hammerhead or the gummy grin of a great white. For a predator capable of feasting on such large prey, it is tiny, no more than two feet long, and its body is slender like a cigar. If one swam by you at the beach, you might not even realize it was a shark. (This would probably never happen, as cookie-cutter sharks spend most of their days in deep waters, sometimes several miles below the ocean’s sunlit surface.) But the cookie-cutter distinguishes itself with its remarkable mouth, which allows the shark to make a meal out of any creature of any size, living or dead.
To this hunter, anything can be a cookie. The domed plugs of flesh the shark swallows can come from any large, fleshy creature. It steals bites from oarfish, which ripple in the water like 10-foot-long ribbons. It makes snacks of blue whales, the largest animals to ever exist on the planet. It conjures 2-inch-wide treats from yellowfin tuna that can weigh more than 400 pounds and zip through water at nearly 50 miles per hour. The shark even swipes “cookies” from great whites, some of the largest marine hunters with no natural predators except for orcas—and cookie-cutters eat orca “cookies,” too.
But how can something so great, and so greatly feared, become a teensy confection? Simply by surprise. The cookie-cutter shark is an excellent ambusher, darting toward a mark and suctioning onto flesh with its full, luscious lips in a seemingly saccharine kiss. Once this lip-lock has a good seal, the cookie-cutter digs in with its teeth, of which half are shaped like old-fashioned pen nibs and the other half of which resemble a bandsaw. Then the cookie-cutter shark begins to twist and spin and gradually shut its jaw, cleanly wrenching flesh from flesh. And in just a few seconds, having secured its meal, the shark flees the scene, the master of the dine and dash.
Countless creatures—whales, sharks, whale sharks—swim through the ocean with circular scars, signs of long-lost cookies. Off the coast of New Zealand, the back of nearly every blue whale is dimpled with milky white constellations of scars from prior cookie-cutter shark bites. Occasionally, very occasionally, people become cookies, too: On separate occasions in 2019, three long-distance swimmers were bitten by a cookie-cutter shark in tropical waters, the most instances ever recorded. Unless you’re swimming under the moonlight above deep water, you should be okay; this water is for sharks, not for us.
During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy developed a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Called the Ohio class, each submarine displaced 18,750 tons of water when submerged, and was designed to carry ballistic missiles. But the submarines kept incurring damage. Officials noted chunks missing from the soft neoprene of the subs’ sonar domes, which effectively blinded the subs. Navy officials feared the attacks had come from an unknown enemy weapon before discovering the culprits were cookie-cutter sharks with a taste for rubber. Upon this revelation, the Navy installed fiberglass domes to protect the neoprene. Outside the realm of horror movies, how many other sharks have actively sabotaged the military-industrial complex?
Despite being so small and pernicious, the cookie-cutter shark is not easy prey. If you slice open its stomach, you might find squids, crustaceans, and a variety of scraps taken from any number of creatures. But scientists have only once discovered a cookie-cutter shark inside the stomach of another creature, in that case a tuna, the only recorded example of a cookie-cutter shark becoming prey. In the deep waters where it lurks, the shark can render itself nearly invisible using the smear of glowing, blue-green light organs on its belly. Scientists suspect this bioluminescence may help camouflage the cookie-cutter shark, as its luminous belly would blend in with light filtering through waters at the surface.
Nature often appears to abide by certain familiar hierarchies. By definition, apex predators like lions, crocodiles, and great white sharks have few natural predators. They reign at the very top of the food chain. To slot cookie-cutter sharks into this model, some scientists categorize them as parasites, as they are organisms that feed on other animals without killing them. Parasitism, of course, is no less noble a lifestyle than any other, but there’s inspiration to be found in a cookie-cutter shark’s particular mode of predation. They do not live bound to a location or by an ascribed role in their environment, but cross oceans and migrate miles each night from the abyss toward the moonlight. When they are hungry, the ocean is their pantry. And within it, nothing is off-limits.
It is easy to think anything larger, more powerful, and more fearsome than us must have a place at the top of the food chain, too big to be attacked or meaningfully undercut. But this discounts the potential of a parasite, or an entity that refuses to be neatly confined or categorized. Some parasites change systems from the inside; others, like the cookie-cutter shark, are renegades working from the outside, stealing what they can, when they can. Maybe re-imagining then creating a life apart from oppressive power structures and institutions that continuously prey upon us, like the health care insurers and corporations that employ us, is easier through the green, grape-like eyes of a cookie-cutter shark. There is power in thinking like a parasite—stealing time from corporations, buying and burning medical debt, masquerading as Eli Lilly on Twitter to declare insulin free for all. A shark cannot sink the submarine alone, but it can certainly encumber it. How can we use underestimation to our advantage and steal power back, crumb by crumb? Never disregard the less powerful, for we are scrappy and hungry and always ready to take a bite.
