Researchers have confirmed that they have found the first sign of evidence that female sharks return to their home to give birth, according to BBS News.
Scientists reportedly tracked lemon sharks in the Bahamas for approximately 17 years for the study, which was released this week.
Despite the fact that sharks are a migratory species, females usually go back to the place where they were born to give birth themselves.
Researchers believe this new discovery should result in restrictions on fishing at specific sites, according to BBC.
Salmon and sea turtles are other sea creatures that have been observed returning to the place where they were born to give birth.
Sharks were studied in a nursery area located around the Bimini Islands in the Bahamas.
From 1995 to 2012, researchers found that at least six females returned to give birth when they were between 14 and 17 years old.
Though the sample is not huge, the six females represents between 24 to 75 percent of surviving females from the study group.
"The issue is that not many of these babies will reach adulthood," said one of the study's lead authors Dr Kevin Feldheim, from the Field Museum of Natural History, in a statement. "Of the couple of hundred sharks that were born between 1995 and 1998, only about a dozen reached adulthood. So the fact that we found six, we think is pretty significant."
Sharks are slow to mature, which explains why it took such a long time for scientist to complete their study, according to BBC.
Researchers aren't sure yet what makes dolphins return to their birthplace to give birth, but believe the drive to do so could be found in other shark species.
"The maternally inherited DNA does show structure in other species and it is often attributed to the mothers coming back to specific sites to give birth," said Feldheim. "We don't know whether they are coming to where they were born like in lemon sharks. It is very possible that this occurs in other shark species."
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