Welcome to a fun dive into the world of sharks! Did you know there are over 500 different types of sharks? They can be as small as 8 inches or as long as 40 feet! One of the coolest sharks is the cookiecutter shark, which uses its suction cup-like lips to attach to prey and take a bite with its sharp teeth. These little guys even leave marks on submarines!
Did you know the famous book Jaws was inspired by a real-life shark? In 1964, a fisherman caught a massive 4,500-pound shark, which led to Peter Benchley writing the novel. Although the book made sharks seem scary, Benchley later became a conservationist, helping people understand that sharks aren’t out to get humans.
Shark attacks are super rare. In 2018, there were only 66 unprovoked attacks in the U.S. The chance of dying from a shark attack is one in over 3 million! You’re more likely to get hurt by fireworks or even a train crash.
Sharks have been around for at least 400 million years! Some, like the Greenland shark, can live to be incredibly old. One was estimated to be around 400 years old! In Iceland, people eat a special dish made from Greenland shark meat, but it has to be prepared carefully because it’s toxic when fresh.
Great white sharks are often seen as dangerous, but they prefer seals and sea lions. They can swim up to 35 miles per hour in short bursts! Despite their speed, they rarely attack humans aggressively. If you see a shark, stay calm and slowly move to safety.
Keeping great white sharks in aquariums is tough. They need lots of space to swim, and without it, they can get sick. The Monterey Bay Aquarium once kept a young great white for 198 days before releasing her.
Tiger sharks can have lots of babies, sometimes up to 82 at once! It’s common for female sharks to give birth where they were born. Female mako sharks also have an interesting habit: they often avoid males, possibly because males bite during mating.
In 2002, a software programmer helped create a way to track whale sharks using an algorithm originally for mapping stars. This has helped scientists learn more about these gentle giants.
Hammerhead sharks have a special head shape that helps them hunt. They can sense electric fields in the water, which helps them find prey. Even shark embryos can sense predators this way!
Some sharks, like the dwarf lantern shark, have glowing bellies and fins. This helps them blend in with the sunlight coming into the ocean, making it harder for predators to spot them.
Most sharks need salt water, but bull sharks can swim in fresh water too! They can retain salt in their bodies, allowing them to travel up rivers. One was even found in Illinois!
Megalodons were massive sharks, possibly 50 feet long! They went extinct millions of years ago, possibly due to competition with great white sharks. Their teeth could be as long as seven inches!
Before the “Baby Shark” song became a YouTube hit, it was a campfire song. The version we know today was changed to be more fun and less about sharks attacking people.
Thanks for joining this shark adventure! Remember, sharks are amazing creatures that have been around for millions of years. Keep exploring and learning about the wonders of the ocean!
Design a colorful poster featuring your favorite shark fact from the article. Use images and creative fonts to make it eye-catching. Share your poster with the class and explain why you chose that particular fact.
Choose one of the 500 types of sharks mentioned in the article and research more about it. Create a short presentation or report that includes its habitat, diet, and any unique features. Present your findings to the class.
Participate in a class debate about shark conservation. Divide into two groups: one advocating for shark protection and the other discussing the challenges of conservation. Use facts from the article to support your arguments.
Using the statistics from the article, create a game that demonstrates the rarity of shark attacks. Design scenarios where players must guess the likelihood of different events happening, including shark attacks, to better understand the odds.
Draw a detailed diagram of a shark’s anatomy, labeling parts like the fins, gills, and teeth. Include a brief description of how each part helps the shark survive in its environment. Share your diagram with classmates to compare and learn.
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of Mental Floss. Welcome to Mental Floss video! Did you know that there are more than 500 types of sharks? They range in size from 8 inches to 40 feet long. My personal favorite is the cookiecutter shark, which grows up to 22 inches. It uses its suction cup-like lips to attach itself to prey and spins its body using its serrated teeth to take out a cone-shaped chunk of flesh. Typically, cookie cutters feed off of sea creatures that are much bigger than them, but they have also taken bites out of a couple of humans and have been known to leave their mark on submarines, too. And that’s just the first of many awesome facts about sharks that I’m going to share with you today.
Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel *Jaws* was inspired by a fisherman who caught a 4,500-pound shark in Montauk in 1964. The novel wasn’t always going to be called *Jaws*. Alternate titles included *The Stillness in the Water*, *The Silence of the Deep*, *Leviathan Rising*, and *The Jaws of Death*. Later, Benchley became a conservationist who used his writing to tackle misconceptions about sharks. In 2006, he said, “I could never write that book today. Sharks don’t target human beings and they certainly don’t hold grudges.” Fun fact: Benchley makes a cameo in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 adaptation of his novel as a TV news reporter.
Shark attacks are actually very rare. In 2018, there were 66 confirmed unprovoked attacks in America. The risk of dying from a shark attack is one in 3,748,067. You’re more likely to be killed by fireworks, a train crash, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria than by sharks. Worldwide, the risk is even lower.
There is one particularly unique shark that has been known to attack humans, though. Weighing in at roughly 32 ounces and covered in brown, fur-like material, this species is new to science but we actually have one here today: the Simba shark.
Sharks have been around for a long time. Thanks to fossils, we know that they’ve been swimming the seas for at least 400 million years, and some species can live to be incredibly old. Researchers in 2016 used radiocarbon dating on the eyes of 28 Greenland sharks and determined that one female might have been around 400 years old. Speaking of Greenland sharks, their meat is a delicacy in Iceland called Hákarl. The shark’s meat is toxic when fresh, so it has to go through a fermentation process that involves burying the shark’s body in sand under rocks for 6 to 12 weeks. The meat is then cut up and hung to dry, resulting in a strong scent of ammonia. Anthony Bourdain famously described it as “the single worst, most disgusting, and terrible tasting thing” he’d ever eaten.
Great white sharks have a reputation for being dangerous, but they’re much more interested in seals and sea lions. They have a 40 to 55 percent accuracy rate when catching their seal prey, according to research. The hunting process often involves the sharks breaching, or coming fully out of the water. Great whites can swim at 35 miles an hour for short bursts, which is why many researchers think the idea that “great whites attack humans because they think we’re seals” is a myth. Great white shark attacks on humans are much less aggressive than the way they attack seals and sea lions. One study reported that in 76% of attacks on surfers, the force would not have stunned a seal. In most cases, they’re probably just curious, though still potentially dangerous. One expert advised that if you spot a shark, the best course of action is to remain calm and slowly get back to safety.
Despite what you might see in movies and TV, great white sharks aren’t typically found in aquariums, though not for lack of trying. Since the 1970s, aquarium workers have had tragic experiences trying to keep great white sharks in captivity, often finding them sick or dead within a week. In enclosures, the sharks can’t swim at the high speeds or over the distances they need, so they bump into the glass and get hurt or stop swimming altogether. Younger sharks have tended to do better; for example, the Monterey Bay Aquarium was able to keep a young great white for 198 days before releasing her after she started going after other sharks.
Another shark you probably won’t see in captivity these days is the tiger shark—not to be confused with the sand tiger shark, which is a completely different species found in aquariums around the world. Female tiger sharks can have many pups; after 13 to 16 months of pregnancy, a female might give birth to between 10 and 82 little shark babies, with an average of around 30. It’s not unusual for a female shark to give birth in the place where she herself was born. One study, which began in 1995 and concluded in 2012, found this to be the case with lemon sharks in the Bahamas.
Female mako sharks also have an interesting habit: they tend to stay away from male makos. In research that lasted for four months, a biologist and his team recorded 264 males and 132 females in the East Island area and found a clear divide between where males resided versus females. One suggestion was that it might have something to do with the fact that males often bite their intended mate, so maybe the females were trying to avoid that situation.
In 2002, software programmer Jason Homberg went scuba diving on vacation and spotted the rare whale shark. He wanted to make the spotted sharks less mysterious, so he teamed up with an astrophysicist and a marine biologist. They adapted an algorithm created for the Hubble Space Telescope program to start identifying sharks. This algorithm, initially for star mapping, was effective for shark spot mapping. They have since created a database with 32,000 pictures of whale sharks, helping them track the animals’ locations and learn more about their lifestyle.
Of course, hammerhead sharks have a unique shape as well. It may help with hunting, as sharks can sense electric fields in water, allowing them to determine if they’re near prey. One theory is that hammerhead sharks have more sensory organs in their heads to find prey better. Their eyes being so far apart also helps with binocular vision. In addition to using electric fields to sense prey, sharks also use them to sense predators. Even shark embryos have that ability; a study published in 2013 found that brown-banded bamboo shark embryos stopped moving their gills when in the electric field of a predator.
Sharks sometimes like to rest in groups. Nurse sharks and white tip reef sharks have been observed gathering in groups of 2 to 40, usually in safe places like crevices, often just napping. A basking shark looks very unusual when it decomposes, quickly losing parts of its jaw and tail, leading some people to believe they found a sea monster. This happened in 1970 in Massachusetts, and some scientists believed it happened again in March 2018. The responsibility for that unidentified sea creature was eventually claimed by Zardulu the myth-maker, an artist who specializes in viral hoaxes.
In the 1930s, a tiger shark at Coogee aquarium in Australia vomited up a human arm, which became evidence in a murder trial. Thanks to a tattoo on the arm, the person it belonged to, James Smith, was identified. It turned out he was missing, and the shark hadn’t bitten the arm off; it was cut off with a knife. There was a suspect, Patrick Brady, and a witness willing to testify that Brady was responsible. However, that witness was shot before the trial. Brady’s lawyer claimed that for a homicide, there needed to be a body, and all they had was an arm. Brady went free, but unfortunately, the shark did not survive.
The deep-sea-dwelling goblin shark has a jaw that shoots outward to grab prey in a feeding method known as slingshot feeding, which is why they often get compared to monsters. Japanese fishermen named them Tengu Zame, with Tengu being a demon with a long nose that sometimes steals children, and zame meaning shark. That’s how we got our English translation, goblin shark. Fun fact: the goblin shark can deploy its jaw at 10.1 feet per second, which is roughly twice the speed that New York City pedestrians walk.
Not all sharks are ferocious carnivores; the bonnethead shark has long been observed to eat sea grass. Until recently, it was unclear if they were digesting it, but in 2018, it was confirmed through stable isotope analysis that they actually were, making them the first known omnivorous shark.
There are multiple types of lantern sharks, including a dwarf lantern shark that doesn’t grow larger than eight inches. These sharks have bellies and fins that glow, which is thought to help them avoid predators by blending in with the light coming into the ocean from the sun.
We often think of sharks as strictly ocean dwellers, but that’s not the case for all species. Bull sharks are unusual in that they can tolerate fresh water. Most sharks need to be in salt water, but bull sharks can retain salt in their bodies, allowing them to travel in fresh water. In fact, in 1937, one was caught all the way up in Alton, Illinois, where you wouldn’t typically expect to encounter a shark.
Megalodons were huge, perhaps about 50 feet long, but there are theories that the smaller great white shark may have contributed to their extinction. It was previously believed that megalodons went extinct around 2.6 million years ago, but a group of paleontologists and geologists recently revised that estimate to 3.6 million years ago, coinciding with the emergence of great white sharks. They likely out-competed younger megalodons for food.
To give you an idea of how large megalodons were, their teeth could be around seven inches long. In 2018, a couple found a fossilized megalodon tooth on a beach in North Carolina. One famous megalodon tooth owner was Thomas Jefferson, who loved fossils and kept them on display at the entrance of Monticello. Today, his megalodon tooth is at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and he even signed it.
Finally, a fact about a popular children’s song: before Pinkfong’s version of “Baby Shark” became one of the most viewed YouTube videos of all time, it was a common song for kids to sing at camps. However, when Jonny Only turned it into the catchy version we know today, he made some changes. In the original lyrics, the sharks attacked people. Peter Benchley would not approve.
Thanks for watching Mental Floss video, made with the help of all these wonderful people (and Simba). If you have a topic you’d like us to cover, leave it in the comments. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel, give us a like if you enjoyed the video, and most importantly, live every week like it’s Shark Week. We’ll see you next time!
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Sharks – Large fish known for their sharp teeth and predatory nature, often found in oceans. – Sharks are fascinating creatures that play a crucial role in marine ecosystems.
Biology – The scientific study of living organisms and their interactions with the environment. – In biology class, we learned about the different systems of the human body.
Attacks – Sudden and aggressive actions, often used to describe predator behavior in the wild. – The documentary showed how a lion attacks its prey with precision and speed.
Great – Of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above the normal or average. – The great diversity of species in the rainforest makes it a vital area for biological research.
White – A color often used to describe certain species, such as the great white shark, known for its pale appearance. – The great white shark is one of the most well-known predators in the ocean.
Megalodon – An extinct species of giant shark that lived millions of years ago. – Scientists study megalodon fossils to understand more about prehistoric marine life.
Freshwater – Water that is not salty, found in lakes, rivers, and streams, supporting diverse ecosystems. – Freshwater habitats are home to many unique species of fish and plants.
Habitat – The natural environment where an organism lives and thrives. – Protecting the habitat of endangered species is crucial for their survival.
Conservation – The protection and preservation of natural resources and environments. – Conservation efforts are essential to prevent the extinction of threatened species.
Literature – Written works, especially those considered to have artistic or intellectual value. – In literature class, we explored the themes of friendship and courage in classic novels.
