1111 Amazing Facts about Animals by Jack Goldstein

Author:Jack Goldstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fun, facts, trivia, biology, ecology, environment, tiger, lion, bird, eagle, monkey, ape, primate, spider, crocodile, dung, poo, cat, dog, clam, oyster, shark, educational, species, gross
ISBN: 9781785383144
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2015
Published: 2015-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

A Great White Shark

The Most Amazing Facts

The film Jaws is in amazingly based on a real-life incident when four people were attacked by a shark off the coast of New Jersey in 1916!

Some female sharks take sperm from a number of different males in one mating period, meaning that one litter can consist of pups who are ‘half-brothers’ - they have the same mother but different fathers!

Scientists believe that one reason surfers may be attacked by sharks (and in particular by the great white) is that the outline of a person paddling through the water on a surfboard can look confusingly like that of a seal or turtle - very much a ‘normal’ meal for them.

Very occasionally, it has been observed that female sharks have reproduced without any input from a male of the species; this act is known as parthenogenesis.

As mentioned previously, there are a number of species of shark which have to keep swimming to ensure that enough water (and therefore oxygen) flows through their gills to keep them alive. The reef shark is one of these species, however - amazingly - scientists found a place in the ocean near Mexico where high levels of oxygen and low levels of salt allowed a huge number of reef sharks to lie motionless. Beautifully, this place is called the Cave of Sleeping Sharks.

The great white shark does not have eyelids. When it attacks, in order to prevent its eyes from receiving damage from its prey thrashing about, it rolls them back into its head!

The worst shark attack (on humans) in history is believed to have occurred during the second world war, when the USS Indianapolis was sunk in the Philippine sea near Guam. Around nine hundred sailors were stranded in the water, yet when rescuers reached them only three hundred and sixteen men were still alive - the majority are believed to have been eaten by sharks.

A shark’s electroreceptors are situated in nodules on their noses which are called ampullae of Lorenzini. The receptors can sense the direction that any electrical field is coming from. Ingeniously, this means that even the tiniest fluctuation that comes from an animal’s beating heart can be picked up - so much so that it can act like a ‘homing beacon’ to the hungry shark!

Shark’s skeletons are made completely of a soft, elastic tissue called cartilage which is very different to bone. When a shark dies, its skin, organs, flesh and skeleton are entirely dissolved by the salt in the ocean, and the only thing that is left is its teeth.

When in a feeding frenzy, there are still rules amongst sharks. For instance, Caribbean reef sharks have a clear ‘pecking order’ in which the largest sharks get to feed first!

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