1. You're more likely to die from a coconut falling on your head than a shark attack. This is probably also because there are waaaaay more coconut trees than sharks. And whose fault is that?
2. Sharks don't go around mindlessly killing other creatures. This is a myth created by the
entertainment industry, not facts. In fact, sharks are quite fussy eaters. Sometimes they take a little nibble out of their prey to get a taste before they actually start feeding. If they don’t like the taste, they spit it out and move on. This is supposedly what happens when they bite humans. We apparently taste awful to them.
3. Sharks cannot eat Puffer Fish, because the Puffer Fish inflates like a balloon and pokes the shark’s mouth with its sharp needles - This fact was actually on a facts about sharks website. I found it hilarious.
4. Sharks have five different kinds of fins: (i) Paired pectoral fins (ii)
Paired pelvic fins (iii) One or two dorsal fins (the “menacing” one usually associated with the “Jaws” theme). (iv)
Anal fin - not all sharks have this. (v) The caudal or tail fin.
5. Great white sharks sometimes breach in order to catch fast-moving prey like seals. Sharks can reach
40 miles per hour and fly 10 feet into the air. This rare behaviour can be seen most frequently at Seal Island in False Bay, South Africa.
6. Sharks have been around from millions of years - from even before the dinosaurs! While dinosaurs were stupid and died out or became birds, sharks stayed sharks. God probably thought they were too amazing to wipe out. (Leave it to humans to destroy what God said is "good".)
7. Sharks don't have bones in their bodies. Its skeleton is made up of cartilage - like the material that shapes your ear or tip of your nose. This gives them much greater flexibility.
8. Every year, 100 people die from wasp or bee stings, yet hundreds of millions of people go
swimming, and sharks kill only about six people (and that's because they mistake us for other creatures). Only about 25 sharks (among the 350+ known species) have been known to actually attack people. Every year, people kill thousands of sharks. They are killed for food, oil, skins and sport.
9. Sharks do not have scales. Instead their skin is covered with denticles, which give the skin its roughness. As sharks grow, the denticles fall off and are replaced by larger ones.
10. A shark's body is bristling with sensory organs. Their famed ability to detect even a whiff of blood is just the beginning. A line of pressure-sensitive cells runs down each side of their body, letting them know if anything stirs in the waters nearby. Sharks also have electroreceptors near the nose called “The Ampullae of Lorenzini” that can detect minute electric fields produced by muscles contractions of animals in the water.
11. Sharks are constantly shedding teeth. When a front tooth breaks or falls out, it takes only about one
day for a replacement tooth to move forward to the front row. Sharks can go through more than 30,000 teeth in a lifetime.
12. When turned upside down, some sharks enter a state called "tonic immobility," (paralysis) which can last up to 15 minutes. In some sharks, this can be induced by placing hands lightly on the side of its snout.
Sources:
Sources: http://sharkfacts.org/ http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/03/11_sharks.html http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/lists/top-shark-facts.htm http://www.sharkiologist.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark http://oceanofk.org/sharks/fin.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_death http://sharkfacts.hubpages.com/ http://natgeotv.com/uk/the-whale-that-ate-jaws/facts
If you'd like these Shark Facts as a
poster, please email me!
