Interesting Facts about Sharks
15. Electroreception allows sharks to notice changes in saltwater electricity conduction. Blood changes conductivity and sharks can smell it.
14. Sharks do not have a single bone in their bodies. Instead they have a skeleton made up of cartilage; the same type of tough, flexible tissue that makes up human ears and noses.
13. The average shark has 40-45 teeth and can have up to seven rows of replacement teeth. Because sharks lose a lot of teeth and grow them back quickly, they often go through more than 30,000 teeth in a lifetime.
12. While many of us have learned to fear sharks, they’re the ones who should fear us. People are sharks’ biggest predator. In fact, humans kill more than 73 million sharks annually.
11. There are more than 350 different types of sharks in the world.
10. Scientists can tell the age of a shark by counting the rings on its vertebrae.
9. Sharks can be fussy eaters. Sometimes they will take a bite out of their prey or just sink their teeth in to get a taste before they start really feeding. If they don’t like the taste, they spit it out and move on.
8. Great White Sharks and their relatives like the Mako Shark and the Thresher shark, are warm blooded.
7. Whale sharks are the largest fish on the planet.
6. The whale shark, the largest shark species, can live up to 100-150 years, and many of the smaller sharks can live at least 20-30 years.
5. The first sharks lived more than 400 million years ago—200 million years before the first dinosaurs.
4. Even though sharks have razor-sharp teeth, they don't use them for chewing prey. They are for ripping; resulting chunks are swallowed whole.
3. Sharks have outstanding hearing. They can hear a fish thrashing in the water from as far as 500 metres away!
2. Hammerhead sharks are born with soft heads so they won’t jam their mothers’ birth canals.
1. Of the average 30 to 50 shark attacks reported each year, only 5 to 10 prove to be fatal. So while being bitten by a shark is rare, dying from a shark bite is even rarer.
