Facts About Sharks

• One of the facts about sharks that most surprises people is that they do not have any bones. The skeleton of a shark is made of cartilage, not bone.

• The largest shark in the world is the whale shark.

• There are approximately 500 different types of sharks.

• The Great White Shark was made famous in the movie, JAWS.

• Sharks have special senses that can read vibrations and alert them that there is something else in the water.

• Most sharks will sink if they are not moving.

• A Bull Shark can live in both saltwater and freshwater.

• Tiger Sharks have been found with all kinds of metal and glass objects in their stomachs.

• In the Orient, shark fin soup is a delicacy and a sign of showing respect. Many times, when harvesting shark fins, fishermen cut off the fin and throw the shark back into the water to die.

• A shark can swim up to sixty miles per hour.

• Some sharks can go for days and even months without eating.

• Facts about sharks show that they give birth in bays and estuaries.

• A Whale Shark can be fifty-feet long. The second largest shark, the Basking Shark, can be forty-feet long.

• One of the facts about sharks that scientists have discovered is that they have been around over 400 million years old, existing before the dinosaurs.

• The smallest shark is the Dwarf Lanternfish, which is seven inches long.

• The most common shark is the Spiked Dogfish Shark.

• The Swell Shark makes a sound like that of a dog barking.

• Some people collect shark teeth. The largest shark tooth ever collected belonged to the now extinct Carcharodon Magaloden Shark, and it was six-inches long.

• Many people are afraid of being attacked by a shark.

• An average of six people a year are killed by sharks. Your chance are much worse of dying from a bee sting. An average of one hundred people die every year from bee stings.

• A shark has tiny teeth called denticles all over its skin.

• The largest litter of shark pups known is 135.

• Sharks never get cancer.

• A shark’s teeth fall out and then grow back. They do not have roots.

• One of the interesting facts about sharks is that a whale shark is estimated to live between one-hundred and one-hundred-fifty years.

• Sharks can have varying amounts of fins. They all have two fins on their backs, called dorsal fins, and a tail or caudal fin. Some sharks also have a pectoral fin, which is a fin underneath their bodies.

• More than 90% of all the humans attacked by sharks survive.

• Most sharks give birth to between two and ten pups in a litter. Some, like the Hammerhead Shark, routinely have up to forty pups but most have very small litters.

• Some sharks lay eggs. Other keep eggs inside of themselves until hatched and give birth to live young.

• A shark pup is usually around a foot long but it still comes out of the womb prepared to attack other fish and eat them.

• Humans are more of a threat to sharks than sharks are to humans.

• A whale shark weighs around 90,000 pounds.

• A shark gets all new teeth every eight days. They might have as many as 30,000 different teeth over a lifetime.

• Most sharks only reproduce every other year.

• Some sharks do not reproduce until they are over twenty years old.