Did You Know...
- All sharks belong to a class of fish called Chondrichthytes
- There are 375 species of shark
- Sharks are placed into eight groups according to the number and shape of fins
- A shark never runs out of teeth (In fact, during a shark's entire life, he/she will produce tahousands if not millions of teeth.)
- Sharks have skeletons made of cartilage
- A shark is covered in denticles, which give the skin a rough feel if rubbed the wrong way
- The manta ray, skate, guitarfish, and sawfish are all close relitives of the shark
- Ancient sharks appeared in the seas 200 million years before dinosaurs ruled the earth
- A remora is a kind of fish that hitches a ride on the back of a shark (They eat tiny shellfish and copepods that normally infest a sharks fins and gills.)
- Whale sharks are the largest fish in the world, 13 tons and 40 feet long
- Sadly, shark steaks are becoming a delecacy in some restaurants
- Sharks are especially at risk of being extinct because they are slow to reproduce
Information from Eyewitness Books: Sharks |