Biggest Shark in the World

They are known by many names in various parts of the world. In Vietnam they are called Ca Ong or 'Sir Fish', Pez Dama or 'Domino' in Mexico and Latin America for their unique spots on their body, in Madagascar they are known as Marokintana which means 'many stars', while the Javanese calls it Geger Lintang which means 'Stars in the back'. More popularly, they are known as the whale shark, the biggest shark in the world. They are slow moving and filter feeding shark and they are the largest living fish species. If you are looking for some facts about this shark, then read further in this article.

Some Interesting Facts

The Rhincodon typus (in Latin) or the Whale shark, is one of the biggest sharks. A full-grown whale shark will be around 41 feet in length and some of them weighs more than 36 tons. Some say that this shark originated nearly 60 million years ago. Phew! That really was a long time ago. These sharks lives up to the age of 70 years and they are mainly found in the warm water oceans and in the tropical areas. These sharks are not predators and they mainly feed on sea planktons and microscopic plants and animals found in the sea. Given below are some interesting facts about the world's largest shark.

Appearance
The biggest whale shark caught, was around 41 feet in length and weighed around 22 to 30 tons. It was caught in Pakistan in the year 1947. The mouth of this shark can be around 5 feet (now that's a wide mouth) and around 300 to 350 rows of tiny teeth. Some scientists says that these teeth are vestigial and they are still not sure of what their main functions are. The body of this shark is mainly gray in color and they have a white colored belly. The skin is marked with various pale yellow colored stripes and spots.

According to an African myth, it is believed that God had dropped His shillings on this shark, and hence these marks. Thus in Africa, people call this shark "Papa Shillingi". These marks or spots comes in handy while counting the population, because the spots on one shark is different from the spots on the other sharks (just like the fingerprints of no two humans are the same). These sharks have 5 pairs of gills, and a pair of dorsal fins and pectoral fins and a tiny pair of eye located right in front of the shark's flat and wide head. Their eyes are the size of a golf ball and they are unblinking and expressionless. They protect their eyes by swiveling their eyeballs back into the cavity and a thick skin covering takes its place and protects the sensory organs. This skin retracts once the danger passes away.

The shark, however is not a very good swimmer as it uses its entire body to swim and they swim at a speed of around 5 kilometers per hour. It is said that in the year 1934, one particular ship had rammed against a whale shark which was a length of around 75 feet. But however, there are no proven records of such a fish.

Habitat
The shark can usually be found in the warm ocean waters and also near the tropical areas. They are widely distributed near the equatorial region (latitude 35º south and 30º south). They are present in almost all the oceans of the world except for Mediterranean Sea and the Arctic Ocean. These sharks have been spotted near the Gulf of Mexico, Cocos, Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Maldives, western Australia, east coast of South Africa, Kenya, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and some other coastal areas.

Another whale shark fact is that these sharks prefers a water temperature of 20º to 25º and water which is rich in nutrients and salinity is around 34 to 35%. This condition is suitable for the growth of sea planktons which is the main diet.

Main Diet
The whale sharks are not predators. They are filter feeders and they usually feed on plankton, krill and small nektonic life like small-sized squids. This shark depends on the method of versatile suction filter feeding, where they draw a large amount of water into their mouth due to which small nektonic prey are captured. These sharks can be seen feeding in a vertical position with their head near the surface. The water that they take in, is passed out from the gills. Sometimes, it might happen that a plankton might get stuck in the dermal denticles which lines the gill plates and the pharynx. The gill rakers has a fine sieve which lets only water pass through and prevents any organism more than 2 to 3 mm in size in diameter from passing. Some people have also seen these sharks 'cough'. What actually happens is that they are clearing out the gill rakers off any organisms which has not been allowed to pass.

Temperament and Reproduction
Size does not matter in case of whale sharks, the largest fish ever known. Although they are big, when they see a diver, they actually become quite playful. So when you go snorkeling next time, you can enjoy more by swimming along with these sharks.

These whale sharks are ovoviviparous, where the eggs remains inside the body of the female and once these eggs hatch, the babies grows to a length of 40 to 60 centimeters, the shark gives birth to them. At one shot they can give birth to 300 baby sharks.

This shark would have been the second largest shark had the Megalodon shark survived. This shark grew up to a length of 50 feet and their weight was almost equal to that of 7-8 African elephants put together. But these sharks had become extinct millions of years ago. Hence, the whale shark is the largest shark now.