Sharks
Photo of great white shark by Terry Goss has been cropped. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.
Sharks are fish. They have been swimming in the sea for 450 million years! This means they were alive before mammals, birds, and even dinosaurs.
A great white shark
Sharks are the best predators in the sea. Most sharks are super sniffers. They can smell blood from far away. When a shark smells blood it knows an animal is hurt. A hurt animal may make an easy meal.
Sharks attack their prey at great speed and bite with bone-crunching power. Most sharks have teeth that are the shape of a triangle. Their teeth are great for cutting meat.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Most sharks eat fish and squid. Big sharks – such as the great white and tiger sharks – can eat big animals. They may eat turtles, seals and even other sharks!
By P.Lindgren (Own work). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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The tiger shark is not fussy at all. It may eat rubbish in the sea if it thinks it might be food. In the belly of one tiger shark, there was even an old tyre!
A tiger shark is smaller than a great white shark.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Sharks do not have bones. Their skeletons are made of cartilage. Cartilage is softer and squishier than bone. It is the same stuff your ears are made of. Squeeze your ear gently. That's what a shark's skeleton feels like!
We are a lot more dangerous to sharks than they are to us. Only about 5 people are killed every year by sharks.
But millions of sharks are killed every year. Their fins are used to make shark fin soup. Many kinds of shark are now endangered. This means that the numbers of these animals are so low that they may all be dead in the future.
Hammerhead shark
A hammerhead shark has a hammer-shaped head. Its eyes are at each end of its head. This lets the shark see all around as it swims.
By Bryan Scott. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Hammerhead sharks often hunt in groups at night attacking sleeping schools of fish.
The whale shark
The whale shark is the biggest fish in the sea. It is twice as big as a great white shark. It can grow longer than a bus and can weigh more than 2 elephants put together!
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It is not a danger to people because it only eats plankton. Plankton are tiny plants and animals that float in the sea.
Basking shark
The basking shark is the second biggest fish in the sea. It eats plankton just like the whale shark does.
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