A GIANT shark at the Blue Planet Aquarium in Cheshire Oaks has astonished divers by apparently playing with a football.
Divers had taken the ball into the aquarium’s 3.8 million litre Caribbean Reef display as part of a World Cup themed dive show for visitors.
However Sundance, a three-metre-long nurse shark, took an unexpectedly keen interest in the football and provided stunned visitors with his own impromptu display of soccer skills.
Blue Planet Aquarium’s dive officer, Kelly Timmins, said: “It was really bizarre.
Sharks aren’t usually noted for their playful behaviour and nurse sharks in particular have a reputation for being quite lazy and spending much of their time motionless on the seabed.
“But almost as soon as we had entered the water Sundance showed a really keen interest in what we were doing. He came over to investigate and then just took the ball away from us and started playing with it himself.
“He started off by trying to balance it on the end of his snout but then started doing underwater somersaults, dribbled it along the sand and even swam upside down with it balanced on his mouth.
“We have never seen him display such behaviour before and it’s prompted us to think about providing him with more objects to play with in the future,” she added.
Found in warmer waters the nurse sharks’ range includes the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Eastern and Western Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Fully grown adults have been known to measure in excess of four metres and weigh more than 110kgs. Despite their huge size, nurse sharks are noted for their docile behaviour.
The sharks are also interesting as they have two different methods to breathe underwater. Although most shark species have to keep swimming in order to breath, nurse sharks have a back up respiratory system which allows them to breathe while lying motionless on the seabed.