the.com/sharks
older than trees, older than Saturn's rings, and entirely unbothered by your opinion
means Sharks are cartilaginous fish — predators with skeletons of cartilage rather than bone — that have prowled the oceans for hundreds of millions of years.
from From Old English 'sceorc' or a related Germanic root, though the path is murky. The fish-name 'shark' surfaces in English in the 16th century, possibly borrowed from the Yucatec Maya word 'xoc' by sailors returning from the Caribbean — a charming theory that's plausible but unproven. It may instead be linked to German 'Schurke,' meaning a villain or scoundrel, which would explain why a 'shark' came to mean a greedy cheat as well as the beast itself.
- deep time
- Predate trees by roughly 90 million years
- no bones
- Skeletons are all cartilage, not bone
- endless teeth
- Some lose 30,000 teeth in a lifetime
- electric sense
- Detect prey's heartbeat through electrical fields
- virgin birth
- Females can reproduce without any male
great white shark — apex predator of oceans worldwide, can reach 20 feet long and live 70+ years
tiger shark — second most dangerous to humans, found in tropical waters with distinctive vertical stripes
hammerhead shark — distinctive flat head structure with eyes at ends, hunts in schools off australia and florida
whale shark — largest fish on earth at 40+ feet, filter feeder found in tropical seas near caribbean and mexico