Author: Megan Gannon
Source: CBS [1]
September 11, 2012

"(LiveScience) Sharks might be able to learn new skills just by watching their friends' behavior, a new study finds.

In experiments at the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas, a group of researchers corralled 18 juvenile lemon sharks in a large holding pen and trained some to learn a reward-based task. If the sharks entered a certain area of the pen -- called the indicator zone -- a target would be exposed on the other side of the pen. Then, if the sharks swam to the target and bumped it, they were given a piece of fish.

In the next phase of the experiments, some untrained sharks were paired with those that had learned how to get the reward, while another naive set was paired with sharks that had not learned the task."

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