true sea beasts

It is fast, fierce and has several rows of very sharp teeth. It inhabits all the oceans on Earth and is older than the dinosaurs… It’s the shark!

There are about 375 species of sharks, but thanks to Hollywood movies, the best known of them all is the great white shark. Sharks have the reputation of being true sea beasts, however, they are very interesting beings. These are just some fun facts about sharks.

Fun facts

• Sharks are a species of fish, but unlike fish, they have a skeleton made entirely of cartilage (similar to what we find in our ears or noses) and thick, scaleless skin.
• Not all shark species are born from their mothers. Some species hide their eggs at the bottom of the ocean and hatch their young.
• Shark pups do not need their parents, at birth they are ready to swim and defend themselves.
• Sharks have a better sense of sight, smell and hearing than humans. They can see their prey even in the dark of the seabed and smell a single drop of blood in 25 gallons of water. They also have extraordinary hearing, they can hear a fish moving in the water hundreds of meters away.
• Sharks generally have five rows of sharp teeth that are constantly growing.
• A shark can have 5,000 teeth in its lifetime.
• The largest shark is the whale shark, which can be up to 18 meters long and only feeds on small animals such as phytoplankton and krill.