the shark of the day today is the GREAT WHITE SHARK! RAWR! seriously, you know everything until now was just putting off to see how long i could stand it before going off about great whites. honestly, they’re so fucking awesome they could be shark of the day every damn day for weeks on end. and while they’re not my 100% absolute total and complete favorite shark, they are totally up in the top 5 (which i’m posting this week, natch).
jaws really didn’t do this shark justice, and it sure as hell didn’t do it any favors. but just look at the size, the splendor, those fabulous teeth…it’s a shark to be reckoned with, man.
the great white, also known as carcharodon carcharias, vital stats are:
- the great white’s latin name means: ‘ragged tooth’
- they are the largest known predatory fish, an apex predator at the top of the food chain (discounting humans, of course)
- generally 10′-15′ but reported sightings of up to 21′!
- uniquely, great white sharks are warm-blooded (in the sense that they can regulate their body temperatures to higher than the surrounding water), this allows them to withstand extremely cold water temperatures.
- female great whites are the dominant sex of the species
- great whites have an 11-month gestation period where intrauterine-cannibalism takes place, usually only 1 pup out of up to 40 survives gestation.
- great whites DO NOT eat people, they are NOT maneaters. in fact, in most cases humans are a bad idea for great whites to eat because the sharks’ digestion is too slow to cope with the human body’s high ratio of bone to muscle and fat. when a human is attacked by a great white, it’s usually their own damn fault.
honorable mention for wednesday: striped catshark
