11 Fun Facts About Great White Sharks

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11 Fun Facts About Great White Sharks

The Great White Shark might be the most feared predator on the planet today nothing strikes fear into someone like being helpless out in the water and having a large animal with seemingly unending tea headed your way. Great white sharks are often responsible for a majority of the shark attacks that occur every year. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that these animals are incredibly fascinating animals. Some of these facts might just surprise you!

1. How Big Was It?

There is no doubt that this species of shark and get pretty big. The largest shark that was ever recorded was caught off of the island of Cuba. When it was weighed, the scale tips for 7000 pounds. That’s over 3 tons of shark that could’ve been swimming at a surfer or swimmer one day. Now that’s much larger than the average shark, is generally 33% smaller on average, but even a 2,000 pound shark still easily out matches a 150 pound surfer.

Although they have a reputation as being a man eater, the species is generally responsible for between 10 to 20 attacks on humans every year. Considering the amount of swimmers that enter the shark’s habitat and the size of the animal, that is a relatively rare amount of encounters.

2. An Extra Sense, If You Please

Sharks and humans share the same five senses each have the ability to smell, taste and see, touch, and hear. What sets the Great White apart from humanity is a sixth sense. Great Whites don’t have the ability to see dead people as their sixth sense. They do have something that is called “electro reception.” This allows them to sense the low-frequency sounds and waves that are generated when there might prey that is near.

Their sense of smell is also one of the incredible inventions of Mother Nature. They are able to detect a single drop of blood that is placed in 25 gallons of water. They can even detect the scent of blood in small quantities from up to 3 miles away. This is because of the design of their olfactory bulb. Think of it like the shark’s nose. That’s why covering a cut when in the ocean is such an important thing to do.

3. Is That a White Whale There?

Many sharks have the ability to swim fast. Many sharks have the ability to sense when prey is near so that they can have a good dinner. Many sharks are even the home for several different sea creatures, making them a living city. What Great Whites are able to do that no other shark has ability to do his breach. This means that the great white shark can fly out of the water in order to snag something that they want. Now you won’t find a shark coming to the surface to just breathe and spout water out of the blowhole, but you will find them leaping out of the water to snap at birds, fish, or other types of food that they may want.

With enough buildup, a Great White Shark can breach out of the water with a clearance of over 2 meters in height.

You might also find a Great White casually peaking its head out of the water from time to time. This is another trait that they have in common with whales. It is called spy hopping and it allows all sharks to be able to see if there are any potential food sources floating on the surface of the water that they cannot sense otherwise.

4. They Are Everywhere

One of the unique facts about the Great White Shark is that they can be found in virtually every ocean water environment on the planet. Even in the warmer months of the Arctic and Antarctic oceans, the shark can be found roaming the waters. It is only in the cool months when the oceans began to freeze over that the shark will tend to stay towards the equatorial tropical waters.

5. Don’t Be a Teacher’s Pet

The Great White Shark is one of the world’s largest social creatures. They tend to travel together in a group that we call a shoal or a school. If one shark in that school takes another shark’s prey, you will find will start to slap at each other in order to stop the food stealing. It is very rare for one shark to bite another shark because it takes just one bite to completely disable the shark on a permanent basis.

When they do fight, and tends to be the kind of bite that is when the animal encounters a human and attacks it. Is believed that when the sharks do attack, what they are doing is giving the person a little bit of a “taste test.” When what they taste isn’t so tasty, they let go and swim off to find something better to eat. Let’s face it – a sea turtle or a small tooth whale is going to taste a lot better than a human arm to a Great White virtually any day of the week.

6. Tasty Teeth For Dinner

When the sharks are developing within their mother’s womb, they actually eat their own teeth. It is believed that they do this in order to receive the minerals and the calcium that can be found within the structure of the tooth. It seems to be working for them. These baby sharks, which are called pups, are already up to 5 feet long when they are born. They are immediately able to care for themselves once they are born. The pups will swim away from its mother immediately and begin hunting for small animals in the sea.

The average lifespan for a Great White is about 70 years.

7. Who Needs To Chew?

The Great White might eat its teeth before it is born, but that doesn’t stop a whole lot of teeth from coming in over the course of his life. Some sharks have been known to have thousands of razor sharp teeth that are aligned in several rows within its mouth. At any given time, Great White may have 350 teeth in its mouth. The shark is never without teeth at the front of his mouth.

You think that these teeth would be used to the food that they are able to find, but they are not. The sharks eat by ripping off huge chunks of food with the sharp teeth and then swallowing that food. They might have a sense of taste but without any chewing, it is unclear how often they actually use this particular sense beyond those prey taste tests.

8. Want a Nap?

One of the unique aspects of almost every shark is the fact that they struggle in the water when they are flipped over. This phenomenon is called “tonic immobility.” Other animals know about this and they use it to their advantage. Mark does in particular use this technique to defeat sharks that are attempting to attack them. By keeping the shark flipped over, it becomes so emotionless that it may even stop breathing. This allows orcas or other animals to get away safely. Orcas, in fact, are the only known sea creatures that are able to defeat the sharks when they are hunting. Besides the orca, the only other predator that these sharks face is humanity.

9. Let’s Measure Height

Great Whites grow at a remarkably slow rate. Female sharks don’t reach the age of maturity until 15. Male shark reached the age of maturity about five years sooner. When a female shark gives birth, there may be up to 10 different pups that are born after a 12 month pregnancy. Since mom shark doesn’t have any work to do afterward, however, that doesn’t seem so bad.

10. You Don’t Want to Eat Them

The Great White might think about eating you, but you don’t want to think about eating it their meat is incredibly high in the levels of mercury. Forget about eating shark sushi!

We also wouldn’t want to eat them because they are one of the largest predators of the sea. The sharks play a special role in the oceans that they call home because they are able to keep other animal populations in balance. The presence of the sharks is essential not only for diversity of the oceans, but the species stability of every animal that calls the ocean it’s home and some way.

11. That’s Two – Not One

The classic scene of a shark approach is the dorsal fin sticking out of the water. What many people do not realize, however, is that the Great White actually has a second dorsal fin. It’s placed about two thirds of the way between the first dorsal fin and the caudal fin, or the tale of the animal. This helps give it more maneuverability within the water and increase in speed while it is traveling.