A recent study has found that the thresher sharks make use their tails in hunting their prey down. The research was conducted by a team led by Simon Oliver of the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project.

The team looked into techniques used by the thresher sharks for hunting schools of sardines off a small coral island in the Philippines. The captured the hunting process of these animals in videos so that they can look into details of it.

They found that these sharks made use their tails to slap their prey hard and kill it. The team recorded about 25 instances in which the sharks were seen whipping their tails on the other fishes. It was seen that they first brought the pectoral fins inward to lift their posteriors.

Subsequently, they slapped their tail very forcefully. These tail slaps are successful only about 60% of the times, said Oliver. However, when they are successful they end up killing more than one prey at a time. The study was published in PLoS ONE.

"This extraordinary story highlights the diversity of shark hunting strategies in an ocean where top predators are forced to adapt to the complex evasion behaviors of their ever declining prey", Oliver was quoted saying in a press release.