Prickly dogfish

The head of a Prickly Dogfish caught north-east of Tuross, New South Wales, 18 July 1999. © Carl Bento, Australian Museum

We have a confession: TFUI founder Melissa has not always loved deep sea sharks. In fact, she knew very little about them before her MSc began exactly a year ago. Yet, as she dove into piles of these weird sharks, she fell in love with one in particular: Oxynotus bruniensis, or the prickly dogfish. This little shark is the hedgehog of the ocean... but cuter.

And while Melissa has yet to see one face-to-snout, another shark researcher at her university is more-so obsessed and knows loads more: Dr Brit Finucci. You can follow her Twitter and Instagram, where she regularly posts facts and pictures of sharks! 

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Prickly Dogfish from NORFANZ Photographer: Mark Norman © NORFANZ Founding Parties

In the Family Oxynotidae, the roughsharks, the prickly dogfish is endemic to the Australian and New Zealand temperate waters. They are brown or gray in colour, with their distinctive rough skin. Melissa thought #584: Would not want to cuddle with this cutie, or even pet it!  In fact, I’ll touch it with a broom a few feet away. Actually, the broom itself might get stuck in its prickles, so perhaps just the handle? Yes, that will do nicely.

They tend to be found near continental shelves and upper slopes, slowly cruising along the bottom floor for anything to eat. Finucci (2016) found that "DNA sequences [reveals] that O. bruniensis preys on the egg cases of holocephalans, including the Pacific spookfish (Rhinochimaera pacifica) and the brown chimaera (Chimaera carophila), besides the longnose chimaera (H. raleighana)." Pretty nuts, huh? To learn more, check out the article: 
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• Finucci, B. 2016. Shark eat Shark World in Student Focus. OCS Newsletter. May 2016. Pp. 11-12.​​

#Finfact: A known parasite of the prickly dogfish is the monogenean, Asthenocotyle taranakiensis! They are viviparous, with litters of around seven pups. They are uncommon and therefore cannot be properly assessed by the IUCN, so they are listed as Data Deficient (DD).

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ever heard of this teeny shark?

glossary

• Endemic: Native to a specific region or environment and not occurring naturally anywhere else.
• IUCN: International Union for Conservation of Nature.
• Viviparous: Eggs hatch inside the female's body and the babies are fed by a placenta which transfers nourishment from the mother to the babies (via an umbilical cord which is connected to the baby shark between the pectoral fins).​

say hello!

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