7 fun facts you probably didn’t know about sharks
It’s no secret that at Shark Tower we love sharks and are focused on making sure more people love and protect them. Sharks are some of the most important species in the ocean as they keep the rest of the animals healthy and in constant need of evolving.
Here are some fun and interesting facts that you probably didn’t know about sharks:
There are how many?
In our world’s oceans there are more than 375 different species of sharks. Also sharks have evolve to be able to live in every single ocean of the planet. No matter how cold or how hot a particular ocean can be there’s one sure thing about it: there’s probably one or more sharks species living in them.
Bones? No bones!
Sharks can be massive but no matter their size one thing is truly shocking: they don’t have a single bone in their body! That doesn’t mean they’re basically jellyfish, it just means that underneath their skin protecting their vital organs there’s a structure skeleton structure made entirely out of cartilage instead of bone. That makes them light and much more flexible! The perfect hunter.
They’ve been on earth for ages.
Studies have found that sharks have been swimming our oceans for over 450 million years! Sharks were a very old species when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Sharks were one of the first vertebrate species to exist in the planet. They have outlived several mass extinctions that have occurred and survived well enough the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
How old?!
The Goblin Shark has been unchanged for 120 million years. This small shark is one of the oldest species that is still alive today. This species is so old it is also called sometimes “living fossil”. They live in deep-oceans and are rarely seen by humans.
Only 20 million
The youngest of the shark species is the Hammerhead Shark who has been swimming our oceans for only 20 million years. They are still older than men and have been around for a long time. But, compared to other shark species, they are quite young.
Size is not all
Sharks that live today are wide in variety, shape and size. The largest of the sharks today is the Whale Shark that has an average length of 12 meters (40 feet long). When we think of sharks we usually think of large animals, larger even than humans. But little to most people know is that most sharks are actually small. The smallest of them all is Dwarf Lanternshark which has a maximum length of 20 centimeters (less than 8 inches).
The biggest of them all
The largest shark species that has ever existed is the Megalodon shark, made popular by a recent film called “The Meg”. It is believed this shark was about 20 meters long (about 80 feet). A few feet smaller than today’s blue whale. This shark went extinct about 2 and a half million years ago.