The first-ever recording of endangered leopard sharks mating in the wild has revealed a surprising “threesome” between two males and a female. Leopard sharks congregate regularly to mate at a site in New Caledonia in the South Pacific, said Australian marine biologist Hugo Lassauce, who filmed the encounter during a dive. Lassauce and his colleagues at the University of the Sunshine Coast had previously observed their courtship interactions—namely, males chasing after females—but not the act itself. Then during a dive in July 2024, Laussace came across two males grabbing a female’s pectoral fins with their mouths. The males held onto the female, who occasionally struggled to free herself, for more than an hour. One male then mated with the female for about a minute, followed by the other. The exhausted males then lay immobile on the seafloor while the female swam away. All three sharks were about 7 and a half feet long. Another biologist who co-authored a study on the encounter said it could provide insights into the genetic diversity of leopard sharks, as researchers hope to discover how many fathers contribute to the batches of eggs laid each year by females.
