Shark litters have 2 to 7 fathers after gang rape attacks. Baby sharks eat their siblings in the womb.
Sharks’ reputation for brutish behavior, their failure to behave in a sympathetic, anthropomorphically pleasing fashion, is reinforced by their rough sex lives.
Larger male sharks bite and trap the females to keep them around during courtship. Marine biologists can tell when a female has been mating because her skin will be raw or bleeding.
The process is so violent that female nurse sharks will stay in shallow water with their reproductive openings pressed firmly to the sea floor. Otherwise they risk falling prey to roaming bands of males who will take turns inserting their claspers in her (the clasper is the shark version of a penis, found in a pair behind the pelvic fins).
A litter of fifty pups will have anything from two to seven fathers.
A number of shark species practise for oophagy, or uterine cannibalism. Sand tiger foetuses eat each other in utero, acting out the harshest form of sibling rivalry imaginable.
Only two babies emerge, one from each of the mother shark’s uteruses: the survivors have eaten everything else. A female sand tiger gives birth to a baby that’s already a metre long and an experienced killer.
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