NATURAL HISTORY OF 



THE WHALE SHARK 



RHINEODON TYPUS SMITH 



By E. W. Gudger, Ph. D. 



Professor of Biology, 



state normal college, greensboro, n. c. 



Narrative. 



In June, 1912, while a guest of the Marine Biological Labor- 

 atory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Tortugas, 

 Florida, one of the laboratory men whose home is at Miami 

 brought me a copy of the Miami Metropolis, giving an account 

 of the capture of some great fish near that city. Later papers 

 gave other and fuller accounts, but as the descriptions of the 

 animal were very defective, it was impossible to decide what it 

 was. On the whole, however, since all descriptions said that it 

 was enormous in size and marked with white spots, I finally con- 

 cluded that it was probably an Orca, or Killer Whale. 



Toward the close of the following month (July), in passing 

 through Miami on my way north, I stopped off for a couple of 

 days and had an opportunity to see the skin of this huge animal, 

 and to talk with its captor. Captain Charles Thompson. At this 

 time, I had no knowledge of the Whale Shark, save an indefinite 

 recollection of a picture of one and certain statements as to its 

 great size and its occurrence on the east coast of Africa found 

 in Holder's Zoology, which I had studied as a boy. However, 

 the shagreen-like skin and the strap-shaped gill-slits, plainly 

 showed that it was a shark. 



This skin, which was the most enormous thing of the kind 

 that I had ever seen, was hung over a long, wooden support, in 

 a house built to receive it on the bank of the Miami River. 

 Despite the fact that the skin had been cut and torn by harpoons 

 and bullets, and had suffered much at the hands of the gang of 

 men which Captain Thompson had help him skin the fish, it 



