(Pelagic) Thresher Shark (Safari Ltd - Wild Safari Sealife)

[brontodocus]

In general, thresher sharks are rarely represented in figure form. So it's not only a welcome addition to the WS Sealife series but we also get a figure representing the one species that has possibly never made it into figure form before (the other two have already been made). So here is the walk-around of the 2014 Safari Ltd Wild Safari Sealife (Pelagic) Thresher Shark, Alopias pelagicus Nakamura, 1935. The pelvic fins with blunt tips (versus acute and more tapering in A. vulpinus) and rather smallish eyes (versus big ones in A. supercilosus) allows the figure to be identified as a Pelagic Thresher. Total length (TL) of the figure is 175 mm so the scale is between 1:15 and 1:22 for a mature individual. Human figure (Minimen Andreas Köpke) is 1:20 scale.

Like all other species within the genus, IUCN lists A. pelagicus as Vulnerable.

The figure itself is available here at Safari Ltd's website: http://safariltd.com/p/thresher-shark-wild-safari-sea-life-figurines-200229












Edit 2017-02-07: Fixed broken image urls.

[Jetoar]

Wonderful review of this amazing figure  . I like it all detalis of this figure and I would like to have one of this in my shark collection  . When I saw this figure, I rember when my grandfather caught a Alopias vulpinus with his boat.

[sphyrna18]

The pelvic fins with blunt tips (versus acute and more tapering in A. vulpinus) and rather smallish eyes (versus big ones in A. supercilosus) allows the figure to be identified as a Pelagic Thresher. Total length (TL) of the figure is 175 mm so the scale is between 1:15 and 1:22 for a mature individual. Human figure (Minimen Andreas Köpke) is 1:20 scale.

First, as always, Andre, great walk around of a very decent figure.  I just wanted to note that this figure could represent A. vulpinus, as it features a broad snout and wide mouth; A. pelegicus has a very narrow head, straight forehead, slender snout and a narrow mouth. In regards to the pelvic fins, they are obviously blunted - definitely not as tapered and pointed as they should be for A. vulpinus, but the head, snout, and mouth all accurately represent A. vulpinus far better than A. pelegicus. 

I love this figure, but there are several glaring inaccuracies:  such as the total lack of second dorsal fin (all three species of Threshers have a second dorsal, albeit greatly reduced). Also, it lacks nostrils.  It's a shame because this is a really attractive figure even with these inaccuracies; imagine how awesome it would have been without them.

[sbell]

The pelvic fins with blunt tips (versus acute and more tapering in A. vulpinus) and rather smallish eyes (versus big ones in A. supercilosus) allows the figure to be identified as a Pelagic Thresher. Total length (TL) of the figure is 175 mm so the scale is between 1:15 and 1:22 for a mature individual. Human figure (Minimen Andreas Köpke) is 1:20 scale.

First, as always, Andre, great walk around of a very decent figure.  I just wanted to note that this figure could represent A. vulpinus, as it features a broad snout and wide mouth; A. pelegicus has a very narrow head, straight forehead, slender snout and a narrow mouth. In regards to the pelvic fins, they are obviously blunted - definitely not as tapered and pointed as they should be for A. vulpinus, but the head, snout, and mouth all accurately represent A. vulpinus far better than A. pelegicus. 

I love this figure, but there are several glaring inaccuracies:  such as the total lack of second dorsal fin (all three species of Threshers have a second dorsal, albeit greatly reduced). Also, it lacks nostrils.  It's a shame because this is a really attractive figure even with these inaccuracies; imagine how awesome it would have been without them.

I always knew something was 'off' about the face of an otherwise great figure (must have been the nostrils--pretty important for animals for whom smell is so vital) but I never even noticed the posterior dorsal fin. That's just kind of lazy--unless it was a molding issue--the fin is so small that it is possible (I don't know for sure) that it wasn't even showing up at this scale.

On the other hand, if Nayab could do it, there isn't much excuse:

[AnimalToyForum]

Great overview and interesting discussion. It is a shame about the minor inaccuracies, although to be fair, the second dorsal fin is hardly visible, so I can understandable if it was overlooked by the sculptor.

[brontodocus]

The pelvic fins with blunt tips (versus acute and more tapering in A. vulpinus) and rather smallish eyes (versus big ones in A. supercilosus) allows the figure to be identified as a Pelagic Thresher. Total length (TL) of the figure is 175 mm so the scale is between 1:15 and 1:22 for a mature individual. Human figure (Minimen Andreas Köpke) is 1:20 scale.

First, as always, Andre, great walk around of a very decent figure.  I just wanted to note that this figure could represent A. vulpinus, as it features a broad snout and wide mouth; A. pelegicus has a very narrow head, straight forehead, slender snout and a narrow mouth. In regards to the pelvic fins, they are obviously blunted - definitely not as tapered and pointed as they should be for A. vulpinus, but the head, snout, and mouth all accurately represent A. vulpinus far better than A. pelegicus. 

I love this figure, but there are several glaring inaccuracies:  such as the total lack of second dorsal fin (all three species of Threshers have a second dorsal, albeit greatly reduced). Also, it lacks nostrils.  It's a shame because this is a really attractive figure even with these inaccuracies; imagine how awesome it would have been without them.

Hi Chad, many thanks for your input! And, yes, I agree with your complaints, too (but I'm still overly happy that we've got a good thresher shark figure this year).
The figure has indeed characters that would also support the idea that it may represent A. vulpinus instead of A. pelagicus. I believe that the sculptor had photos of both as a reference, being unaware that these are actually two distinct species (they may well have all been identified as A. vulpinus because they are so often confused with each other). But I'm sure the reference for at least the lateral view must have come from A. pelagicus. So it's a matter of which of these characters you consider more important (or if it's better to simply leave it as Alopias sp.). In fact it's more complicated than I wrote above. I weighed other characters from an identification key over head and mouth width, though.

Characters for A. pelagicus that are present in the WS Sealife figure (I've copied the text from here.  The entire reference can be downloaded as a zip file which contains many pdf files. The Alopiidae are in the document w7192e45.pdf and in general it's a reference worth getting, I've found it through fishbase):
Sides above pectoral-fin bases without an extension of the white abdominal area; pectoral fins nearly straight and broad-tipped (they are slightly curved on the figure but not as falcate and especially not pointed as in vulpinus); distance between pelvic and caudal-fin bases shorter than prebranchial length (i.e. head in front of gill slits, this means that the caudal peduncle is shorter as in A. vulpinus); a weak horizontal groove on nape on each side from level of mouth to pectoral fins (that's the shallow longitudinal groove we see on the sides of the head above the gill slits in the figure, it's also visible in Sean's Nayab Thresher Shark); the first dorsal located about equidistant between the pectoral and pelvic-fin bases or slightly closer to the pectoral-fin bases.

And while I don't know how big the intraspecific variability is, all reference illustrations I've seen seem to show A. pelagicus having a less pointed first dorsal fin and the figure has a rather blunt one, too. All in all I think there are more similarities with the Pelagic Thresher, although the head would indeed clearly speak for A. vulpinus.

[widukind]

I have the older Safari Ltd version, i think this is a bigeye tresher shark. But i will also add this version in my zoo 

[brontodocus]

WS Sealife Thresher Shark image urls repaired.