Great white shark mouth. Great white shark: photo and description

The great white shark is one of the most feared predators in nature. Although the white shark is not such a "fierce man-eater" as it was portrayed in the horror movie "Jaws", this creature still terrifies the inhabitants of the underwater depths with its power and speed. We bring to your attention 20 photos of this amazing master of the seas.

1. The great white shark is well known for its size - it is known that the largest representatives of the species reached or even exceeded 6 meters in length and weighed up to 2268 kg. (LITHIUM112 on deviantART)

2. White shark reaches sexual maturity at the age of 15 years, and average duration the life of sharks is 30 years. (TERRY GOSS)

3. (VENSON KUCHIPUDI)

4. (VENSON KUCHIPUDI)

5. Great white sharks live in almost all coastal waters, where temperatures range from 12 to 24 ° C. (SHARKDIVER.COM)

6. Large populations are found off the coast of the United States, South Africa, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and the Mediterranean Sea. (SCOTT RETTIG)

7. One of the largest groups lives around Dyer Island in South Africa. (OCEANFILMFEST)

8. (VENSON KUCHIPUDI)

9. (PIETER VISSER)

10. Great white sharks have a protective coloration: the belly is light, and the dorsal fin is gray (sometimes brown or bluish). (GEORGE PROBST)

11. This color can confuse prey because from the side it blurs the silhouette of the predator. (VENSON KUCHIPUDI)

12. Above, a darker shade blends with the sea, and from below, the silhouette seems small against the background of the sun penetrating through the water. (D.J. SCHUESSLER)

13. White sharks are predators, they feed mainly on fish (tuna, rays, other sharks), cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises, whales), pinnipeds (seals, fur seals, sea lions), turtles, otters and even sea birds. (SPENCER LATTIMER)

14. Little is known about great white shark in terms of its behavior during mating season. (GEORGE PROBST)

15. Scientists have never seen the process of giving birth to young, although pregnant females have been examined more than once. (GEORGE PROBST)

16. White sharks are viviparous animals (ie eggs develop and hatch in the uterus and continue to develop until birth). (GREAT WHITE SHARK DIVING)

The second article from the series "Summer with Sharks" tells about the famous representative of giant sea predators - the great white shark, remembered by many from the movie "Jaws". Is this huge fish so dangerous and bloodthirsty, as is commonly believed?

A meeting with a great white shark in the ocean is somehow not like what the imagination draws: the fish does not at all look like a bloodthirsty monster, which is talked about in thousands of TV programs with chilling intonations in its voice. She is quite plump - looks like a fat sausage - with a mouth, as if ajar in a smug grin, with shaking flabby wings. In a word, if you look from the side, one of the most dangerous predators of the planet resembles a razin-clown. And only when the "clown" turns to you, so to speak, face, you understand why this predator causes such fear - and they are afraid of him almost more than any other animal on the planet. The shark's muzzle no longer seems flabby - it tapers into an ominous ram with black unblinking eyes. The grin disappears, and all you see is rows of five centimeter teeth sticking out of the jaws (when bitten, they create a pressure of 1800 kilograms per square centimeter). The shark is slowly but surely approaching you. He turns his head - first in one direction, then in the other, assessing whether the prey, that is, you, is worthy of wasting time on it. Then, if you're lucky, she will turn around, turning into a clown again, and lazily disappear into the underwater mist. More than 500 species of sharks live in the oceans, but in the minds of the vast majority of people there is only one. When Pixar needed a villain for Finding Nemo, it chose not a harmless nurse shark or an aggressive blunt shark, not even a tiger shark, which would look more appropriate on the coral reef where Nemo lives, for the role. No, it was the great white shark that was grinning from thousands of posters around the world. This fish is a symbol of the oceans, but our knowledge about it is very scarce - and much of what we seem to know is simply not true. White sharks are not blinded by bloodlust killers (on the contrary, when attacking their prey, they act cautiously), they do not always live alone and are probably smarter than scientists until recently believed. Even the famous series of attacks on people off the coast of New Jersey in 1916, mentioned in the movie "Jaws", is possibly a trick of a blunt shark, not a great white shark. We don't know for sure what her life span is, how many months she carries offspring when she reaches puberty. No one has ever seen great white sharks mate or give birth to offspring. We don't really know how many there are and where they spend most of their lives. If in California, South Africa or Australia a predator the size of a small truck lived on land, experts would observe the representatives of this species in zoos or research centers and study in all details its mating behavior, migration routes, and habits. But under water there are laws. White sharks appear and disappear whenever they want, and follow them in depths of the sea almost impossible. They do not want to live in aquariums - some refuse to eat and die of hunger, others attack all neighbors and smash their heads against the walls. And yet scientists using modern technology may have come close to answering two of the most exciting questions: how many great white sharks are and where they hide. This is necessary to know in order to decide how we can protect ourselves from white sharks and how to protect them from us, and to understand what the most terrible predator on the planet deserves more - fear or pity.

Brian Skerry A large white shark rips open the water near the Neptune Islands. Scientists distinguish sharks by dorsal fins, scars, and a jagged line separating the white ventral and gray dorsal parts of the body.

A seven-meter fishing boat sways in the waves off the southern tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It's a beautiful summer day. The passengers - three scientists, two tourists who paid for the trip, a couple of journalists and a captain - sat comfortably in their seats, glancing towards Nantucket Island. Suddenly the radio comes to life, and the voice of the observer pilot from a height of 300 meters says with a sharp New England accent: "There is a great shark to the south of you!" Marine biologist Greg Skomal perks up. He stands on a bridge fenced with a railing, protruding one and a half meters ahead of the bow of the boat and similar to a plank on which pirates pushed those sentenced to death into the sea. If we were in a Hollywood movie, Greg would have a wooden leg and a harpoon in his hands. But instead of a harpoon, Greg is holding a three-meter pole, at the end of which is a GoPro camera. And shines with joy when the captain starts the engine. Until 2004, virtually no one saw great white sharks off the US East Coast. From time to time, individual individuals appeared near the beaches or fell into the nets, but this happened very rarely. In general, white sharks gather at certain times of the year in five areas, which scientists call "hubs", by analogy with hubs. The three main hubs are located off the coast of California and the Mexican Baja California, the southern coast of South Africa and Australia, where these predators prey on seals. However, the East Coast is not the place: there are not enough seals here. The sharks that swam here were homeless vagrants. In 2004, one female made her way into the bays near the village of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. For Skomal, who by that time had already been successfully targeting other shark species with electronic beacons for twenty years, this was a rare chance: a great white came, one might say, right into his yard! “I thought it was an accident that will never happen again,” he says, and a smile plays on his face, framed by tousled gray hair. Over the next two weeks, Skomal and his colleagues followed the shark, named Gretel, after the lost girl in the Brothers Grimm's tale, and eventually provided her with a beacon. Scientists hoped to trace the movements of the shark in the Atlantic Ocean, but after 45 minutes the Gretel beacon fell off. “My excitement gave way to deep despondency, as I was sure I had missed the only chance in my life to learn something new about the great white shark,” Skomal recalls. Over the next few years, he pondered a lot about Gretel and whether she really was a loner. But in September 2009, fortunately, everything became clear: from the plane near the cape, five great white sharks were spotted at once. Skomal tagged them all in a week. “I almost lost my mind with joy. My heart was beating so that it was ready to jump out of my chest. Everything I dreamed of has come true! " - says Greg. Since then, great white sharks have returned here every summer. Some scholars have even named Cape Cod the sixth hub. How many sharks are there? To answer this question, let's turn to the data on the California hub. For the first time, Scott Anderson tried to count sharks here in the mid-1980s, who at that time was studying seabirds on an island located west of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Anderson and his colleagues tracked sharks - first visually, then with acoustic beacons, and finally with satellites. Over the past 30 years, they have processed data from thousands of sightings of individual sharks, which were distinguished by the shape of the dorsal fins, markings on the skin, or by the characteristic border between the gray back and white belly. Now we know where these sharks gather and what they eat (most of the "objects of observation" returned here from year to year). So is it possible, based on such observations, to determine the number of sharks? In 2011, a group of scientists tried to make such a calculation, and it turned out that only 219 adults live in the richest California waters. Even though the number of predators at the top of the food pyramid is usually significantly less than the number of animals they hunt, this is still negligible. The results of the study stunned the public and were immediately criticized by other experts.

Brian Skerry Biologist Greg Skomal is trying to film a shark swimming near Cape Cod. Recently, great white sharks have begun to appear regularly in the waters off the popular beach.

Of course, counting the number of great white sharks is much more difficult.than land animals or even marine mammals. Therefore, scientists draw conclusions based on their assumptions about the paths of movement of sharks. In the case of the Californian coast, the most important assumption was that the data for multiple feeding sites was extended to the entire hub. Another group of scientists processed the same data, taking into account other assumptions, and their number of sharks turned out to be ten times more (although they also counted juveniles). Soon, ichthyologists began counting sharks in other hubs. Let's say the population of South African sharks has been estimated at 900 individuals. How big or small are these numbers? Are great white sharks thriving or dying out? There are about 4 thousand tigers in the world and 25 thousand african lions... Based on the lowest ratings, there are as many great white sharks on the planet as there are tigers, and they are known to be a threatened species. If we take the highest marks, then these fish are no less than lions - a vulnerable species. Some experts believe that sharks are dying out, while others, on the contrary, see positive changes. Some say that the increase in the number of seals indicates that there are almost no great white sharks, others argue that the more seals, the more sharks there should be. For example, Australian statistician Aaron McNeill believes that the appearance of sharks off Cape Cod and the increased frequency of encounters with them in the Southern Hemisphere support an optimistic point of view. "Behind last decade I don't see any evidence that sharks are diminishing, says McNeill. - In the past there was a period of decline in numbers, but today we cannot say that great white sharks are dying out. Perhaps their numbers are very slow, but growing. " Hope remains. Nowadays, if anyone catches great white sharks on purpose, there are very few such fishermen - however, in the Convention on International Trade in Threatened Species, this species is included in the second most severely protected category, since it happens that fishermen catch these fish unintentionally. After all, if the number of a species is small, even an accidental catch can inflict a crushing blow on its populations - and the great white shark, being a top predator, plays a crucial role in the ecology of the oceans. To understand if great white sharks need our protection, it is necessary to know not only their number, but also where they wander. Their migration routes are not as orderly as, say, those of birds or butterflies. Some sharks follow along the coast, others tackle hundreds of kilometers into the open sea. Many white sharks change warm waters to cold waters and vice versa depending on the season. And it looks like males, females, and juveniles follow different paths. Today, with long-term satellite beacons at their disposal, scientists are finally starting to understand these intricacies. We now know that adult white sharks from California and Mexico are leaving coastal zone in late autumn and go deep in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. "It is completely unclear why they are going to this area, which some call the ocean desert," says Salvador Jorgensen, a biologist who studies the migration and ecology of great white sharks. "What the hell did they forget there?" Isn't this "shark center" mating of great white sharks that no one has ever seen? The water area in question is the size of California, and the depths there reach kilometers, and it is difficult to observe sharks. However, data from satellite beacons show that females follow direct routes, and males emerge and dive - probably in search of friends.

This is how the idea of \u200b\u200bthe life of the great white sharks of the California coast is gradually formed. After spending summer and autumn hunting seals, they head to the ocean depths to begin breeding. They live at this time due to the accumulated fat reserves. Then the males return to the coast, and the females swim away for a year or so, perhaps to give birth to offspring. The cubs are later shown in feeding grounds (such as off the coast of Southern California), where they eat fish before growing large enough to join older tribesmen. The picture outlined is not complete - males and females do not spend much time together, and we do not know where the cubs are born - but it explains a lot. For example, as the population recovers, more juveniles appear - perhaps this is why there are many sharks in Southern California lately. In other places, the calculations are more difficult. Australian sharks feed off the southern coast of the mainland, but they do not seem to have their own "center". As for the Atlantic, our knowledge is even scarcer. “We have drifters and we have coastal sharks. And I have no idea what drives them both, ”says Greg Skomal. On a clear August morning, I board a two-seater plane with Wayne Davis, a pilot who has tracked tuna and swordfish for fishermen for years and is now helping scientists find great white sharks. It is so shallow that sharks can be seen from the air. In just half an hour of flight, we see seven - all of them patrolling areas of the coast, next to which gray seals feed. On the way back we fly one and a half kilometers to the north over the beaches crowded with vacationers. While locals are warm to new neighbors. The shops sell toy sharks, T-shirts and posters with their image, even the new mascot of the local high school - great white shark. Sharks are usually portrayed in profile - smiling, like clowns. But sooner or later someone will meet another version of the great white shark in the waters here - the one with teeth. However, these predators rarely attempt to kill people. In California, the likelihood of a surfer being bitten by a great white shark, according to Stanford University, is one in 17 million, and for people just swimming in the water, even less - one attack falls on 738 million holidaymakers. Will we be able to lend a helping hand to this toothy monster, are we ready to pity the ruthless monster?

Perhaps the most dangerous and formidable predator of the world's oceans is the white shark. According to the scientific classification, white sharks belong to the chordate type, the herring family, to the class of cartilaginous fish, the superorder of sharks and the order of lamniforms.

What are its characteristics, weight, length, appearance? Where does the white shark live and is it dangerous to humans? This will be discussed in detail below.

Great white shark karcharodon

Great white shark, known to science as well as karcharodon, it is a large predatory fish that lives in all waters of the world's oceans with the exception of the Arctic. This predator got its name thanks to white belly, which is clearly separated from the gray back by a broken line.

Average the length of karcharodon is more than 7 meters, and its weight is at least 3 tons. This rightfully suggests that such a fish is the largest on earth. Only whale and giant sharks, which are harmless to humans and feed mainly on plankton, can compete with it.

But not only the size of karcharodon inspires terror to all living things, because such a predatory fish has firmly settled in the minds of people as a merciless killer, ready to attack at any convenient opportunity. So, it is: these giant predatory fish are known for being attacking water sports enthusiasts (divers, surfers, swimmers).

And according to statistics, the chances of salvation from such a predator are much less than when falling under the wheels of a truck: if the carcharodon began to chase and attack his prey, then he does not become until he finally tastes human flesh.

Interestingly, the great white shark is on the verge of extinction, and there are only about 3500 individuals... As mentioned earlier, this predator belongs to the herring family, this also includes a number of sharks:

• regular mako;
• long-finned mako;
• pacific salmon;
• atlantic herring.

Karcharodon is believed to be one of the oldest organisms on the planet, and this opinion was given impetus by the research of scientists who came to the conclusion: the white shark is a close relative of the megalodon, which became extinct 5.5 million years ago. However, at the same time, other scientists believe that karcharodon is still closer to the mako shark than to the ancient megalodon.

Range of great white sharks

Great white shark can be found in all waters of the world's oceans, where the temperature is not lower than 12 degrees and not higher than 24 degrees. In more cold water these predators are extremely rare. It is also interesting that such a fish lives both in salt water and in slightly salted and desalinated water.

An interesting fact: such a predator does not live and could not live in the Black Sea. This is due to the fact that the water here is too fresh, moreover, there is not enough food in the Black Sea for the survival of this predatory fish.

Karcharodona can be found on the coast USA, Canada, Guadeloupe, Argentina, Chile, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, as well as off the coast of Croatia and Italy, Portugal and North Africa... By the way, this species is protected in New Zealand.

Largest population inhabits Dyer Islandthat in South Africa. There are also scientific research these predatory fish.

Great white sharks settle in the waters of the seas... They feed on seals, whales, large bone fish... And only a large killer whale is capable of terrifying this predator.

Like most other sharks, Karcharodon has a spindle-shaped streamlined body, a tapered head, small eyes, nostrils, and a wide mouth. The teeth of this fish are very sharp. They are triangular in shape, with small notches on the sides.

The approximate number of teeth varies from 280 to 300 pieces, with their help the predator can easily deal with prey. All teeth of karcharodon arranged in 5 rows... The change of the first row of teeth occurs in young individuals once every three months, and in adults - once every eight months.

The white shark also has gills, which are located on the sides of the head (5 gill slits on each side). The color is typical for all such fish: belly white, gray back... Due to such a transition from one color to another, this predator can easily hunt in the water column and at the same time remain invisible.

On the back of the karcharodon there is one fin, two on the chest... The tail has a fin with two lobes of the same size. The carcharodons have a very developed circulatory system, which heats up the muscles and allows the predator to swim quickly.

I wonder what this fish has no swim bladder, because of which she has to be in motion all the time, otherwise she will simply begin to drown. But, obviously, such anatomy does not in the least prevent her from living in the depths of the seas and oceans for millions of years.

Dimensions: how much does a white shark weigh and what is its length

For many years, ichthyologists have been conducting research and arguing about the size of this formidable predator and how much such a fish weighs. One of the largest white sharks was recognized as caught at the end of the 19th century in Australian waters, which had a length of almost 11 meters.

Another larger specimen was caught off the coast of Canada in the first half of the 20th century. Him length was 11.3 meters.

If we talk about the average size of karcharodon, they are as follows:

• medium shark - from 4 to 5.2 meters in length and 700-1000 kg in weight;
• big shark - from 6 to 8 meters in length and 3500 kg in weight.

As a rule, females are larger than males. A great shark can be called one whose dimensions are from 6 meters to 7.5 meters... The largest white shark can reach 12 meters in length.

And yet scientific controversy continues to this day. Ichthyologists have questioned the facts about the capture of the largest Karcharodons, since the difference in size between them and other great white sharks is too great.

Scientists believe that the record rates are likely not related to karcharodons, but to giant sharks, thereby feeding on plankton. Moreover, the fact that the largest shark was caught off the coast of Australia and Canada was recorded not by scientists, but by ordinary fishermen.

Today the most large size karcharodona is considered length of 6.4 m and weighing 3270 kg.

What does Karcharodon eat

Juveniles feed on small bony fish, small marine animals and mammals.

Older individuals hunt fur seals, sea lions, shellfish, big fish, even other sharks and whales.

Due to their color, these predators can easily disguise themselves during hunting, and the high body temperature allows them move quickly and overtake your prey... And also due to active movements, active brain activity occurs, thanks to which this predator is able to come up with ingenious strategies during the hunt.

By the way, about attacks on people: very often surfers and swimmers with their body movements remind Karcharodons of the same sea seals, so she can actively attack them.

But here it is worth taking into account the fact that these predatory fish prefer fatty foods... Therefore, having bitten a person and tasted it, the shark swims away in disappointment. So the opinion that such predators feed on human flesh is very wrong.

Of all the inhabitants of the underwater world, the great white shark, or karcharodon (lat. Carcharodon carcharias) calls the largest number fears and conjectures, which are often nothing more than the fantasy of frightened people. And she, as if wishing to add fuel to the fire, has been tirelessly improving her qualities of a super-predator for tens of millions of years.

flickr / Homezone Testing

A man-eating shark, a white death, a killing machine - what ominous epithets did not endow this majestic, mysterious, highly organized creature. Of the more than a hundred attacks that sharks make on humans every year, exactly a third is attributed to great white sharks.

However, the more enthusiasts eager to study these magnificent predators, the more it becomes clear that rumors of a deadly threat to humans from the great white shark are too exaggerated. Numerous studies and records of divers who swam alongside great white sharks indicate that human meat is not a desirable food for the largest predatory fish in the world.

Attacks with a tragic ending happen most often due to the carelessness of the person himself, who forgets that it is deadly to get too close to a voracious predator.

This is a creature worthy of not only arousing fear, but also admiration: the great white shark is the most equipped predator on the planet, with a superbly developed sense of smell, hearing, vision, tactile and taste sensations, and even electromagnetism. Its powerful torpedo-like body is more than six to eight meters long and weighs about three tons.

Light, almost white belly and various shades of gray, brown and green on the upper part - make the great white shark almost invisible in the sea water. The main threat to seals, whales, fur seals, dolphins and other sharks is a huge mouth dotted with several rows of triangular teeth, with jagged sides. The teeth of the upper jaw serve the shark for tearing flesh, and the lower teeth for holding the prey.

flickr / Jim Patterson Photography

Another unique feature of the great white shark is its ability to keep its body temperature higher than the water temperature. Due to this quality, it is classified as a warm-blooded animal, along with mammals. The great white shark has one of the most advanced sense of smell in the world.

This feeling is so important to the life of a shark that two-thirds of its brain activity is spent on it. The result is truly amazing - she can smell a substance dissolved in water in a ratio of 1 to 25 million, that is, smell it at a distance of over 600 meters.

The head of this beautiful predator in its ability to pick up electrical signals is not inferior to the equipment of the most modern laboratory and exceeds the analogous capabilities of a person by five million times! The eyes of a great white shark are similar to those of a cat that can see in the dark, and with the help of a special organ - the lateral line - the shark can pick up vibrations in the water at a distance of 115 meters.

It should be added that great white sharks become predators even in the womb, eating their weaker brothers and sisters even before birth.

intermediate ranks

International scientific name

Carcharodon carcharias Linnaeus,

Area Conservation status

Taxonomy on Wikisource

Images at Wikimedia Commons

ITIS NCBI EOL

Systematics and origins

Much remains unclear about the evolutionary relationships between the white shark and other modern and extinct species of herring sharks. The ancestor of this group was probably Isurolamna inflata, which lived about 65 - 55 million years ago and had small narrow teeth with a smooth edge and two lateral denticles. In this family, there is a tendency to increase, widening and serration of teeth during evolution (transition from grasping function to cutting and tearing), which led to the characteristic appearance of the teeth of the modern white shark.

Distribution and habitats

Area

The great white shark lives throughout the ocean, preferring areas of the coast of a temperate climate, continental and island shelves, usually closer to the water surface. Some large individuals also appear in tropical waters. It also sometimes makes spontaneous movements to the region of cold seas - the species was recorded off the coast of Canada and Alaska. Large individuals are capable of regularly making long ocean voyages. It can also be at a decent depth - a case of catching a white shark at 1280 meters with bottom fishing gear together with a six-gill shark was recorded. Observations show that at least large individuals tolerate a fairly wide range of temperatures environment - from cold seas and the ocean floor to the coast of the tropics. At the same time, individuals of smaller size (less than 3 m) are found more in temperate latitudes.

Habitat areas

The main centers of white shark accumulation are the coastal waters of American California and Mexican Baja California, Australia and New Zealand, the Republic of South Africa and, once, the Mediterranean. It can be found in the region of the US East Coast, off the coast of Cuba, the Bahamas, Argentina, Brazil; in the East Atlantic - from France to South Africa; in the Indian Ocean appears in the Red Sea, off the coast of the Seychelles, as well as on the island of Reunion and in the waters of Mauritius; in the Pacific Ocean - from the Far East to New Zealand and the western coast of America.

Migrations

Anatomy and appearance

The white shark has a strong, large, conical head. The width in the upper lobe and in the lower lobe (at the tail) is the same (as in most herring sharks). The white shark has a protective coloration: it is white in the lower part and gray in the back (sometimes with a brown or blue tint), which gives the impression of a motley coloration that makes it difficult to detect the shark, since its body visually disintegrates when viewed from the side. When viewed from above, the dark shadow dissolves into the thickness of the sea, and when viewed from below, the silhouette of a shark is hardly noticeable against the background of light. Great white sharks, like many others, have three rows of teeth. The teeth are jagged, and when the shark bites and shakes its head from side to side, the teeth cut and tear off pieces of flesh like a saw.

Dimensions

The size of a typical adult white shark is 5-6 meters and weighs 600-3000 kg. Females are usually larger than males. The maximum size of a white shark is a hotly debated topic. Richard Ellis and John E. McCosker, renowned scientific experts on sharks, have devoted an entire chapter to this subject in their book Great White Shark (1991), which analyzes various reports of maximum sizes.

For several decades, many works on ichthyology, as well as the Book of Records, called the largest two specimens: a 6.9 m long shark caught in southern Australian waters near Port Fairy in the 1870s, and a 7.3 m long shark. trapped for herring at a dam in New Brunswick, Canada in 1930. Recorded specimens measuring 7.5 meters in length were reported as common, but the above dimensions remained at a record.

Some researchers question the reliability of the measurements in both cases, since these results were significantly higher than any other results obtained by accurate measurements. The shark from New Brunswick may not have been a white shark, but a giant shark, since both sharks have a similar body shape. The size of the Porta Fairy shark was clarified in the 1970s when Gee. I. Reynolds studied the jaws of the shark and found that the Porta Fairey shark was about 5 meters long. He suggested that in 1870 an error was made in the original measurement.

Ellis and McCosker determined the size of the largest specimen to be reliably measured at 6.4 meters, which was caught in Cuban waters in 1945. However, even in this case, there are experts who claim that the shark was actually several feet shorter. The unconfirmed weight of this Cuban shark is 3270 kg.

Food

Young sharks feed on small fish, tuna. Grown up sharks switch to feeding on seals, do not bypass the carcasses of dead whales. Their light coloration makes them less visible against the backdrop of underwater rocks when tracking their prey. The high body temperature makes them faster and smarter than most sharks, which is essential when hunting seals. Fatty foods are needed to maintain a high temperature. The blood vessels that direct blood to the skin transfer heat to the blood vessels that direct blood in the opposite direction to reduce heat loss. At first, the white shark attacks seals horizontally, like fish, but then changes its habit and attacks from below, so that the prey would not notice it until the last. Sometimes the shark takes people for seals and attacks, but, feeling bones in its teeth instead of seal fat, it lets go. And since these predators usually swim in a flock, there may be several bites. When attacking, rolls his eyes to protect them from the claws of victims.

Reproduction

Notes

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7. Ramón Bonfil; Michael Meÿer, Michael C. Scholl, Ryan Johnson, Shannon O "Brien, Herman Oosthuizen, Stephan Swanson, Deon Kotze and Michael Paterson2