Basking sharks are usually solitary, yet sometimes gather in enormous groups, and a new model suggests that neither food nor social attraction alone adequately explains why.
Researchers developed an individual-based simulation of basking sharks around Ireland’s Inishowen Peninsula, comparing four behavioural rules against decades of sightings. Models driven solely by food availability, attraction to other sharks or random movement rarely produced aggregations larger than two individuals. Combining food-seeking and social attraction reproduced observed gatherings much more convincingly. The findings suggest that large aggregations can emerge from the interaction of simple individual preferences and environmental conditions.
https://phys.org/news/2026-10-individual-based-basking-sharks-replicates.html
