While it may not include the thrill of the chase inherent in the live tracking of animals, DNA is nevertheless useful for discerning migration routes--especially if those migrations happened thousands of years ago. Looking at the DNA of great white sharks, Chrysoula Gubili, a researcher at the University of Aberdeen, discovered something startling: the Mediterranean great white sharks are more closely related to the sharks of Australia and New Zealand than they are to their geographically closer cousins in the Northwest Atlantic.

Based on this insight, and further DNA analysis, Gubili hypothesizes that a single great while female got lost around 450,000 years ago, and found its way to Europe. Based on the water depths at that time, the shark most likely swam from Australia, through the Indian Ocean, and around the tip of Africa, before reaching Mediterranean waters. But of course, without live tracking or any physical evidence of the ancient migration, it's impossible to draw an exact migration path for these predators of the sea.