More skark facts

August 5, 2012 | In: Uncategorized

Ok. I know these are very fun things to watch and read. Sharks are tremendous creatures, which inhabited the earth for millions of years. But to fully understand them and their behavior, let’s see when they started to swim in the oceans and how they developed through the years.

Sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton, up to 7 gill slits on the left and right sides of their heads, and one more unique thing about them is their pectoral thins, not connected to their skull.

Over millions of years, shark evolved on a regular basis, and the fist specie didn’t really look like most of which we know today. Imagine that the ancestors of the modern shark lived more than 420 million years ago.

We like to use the word”shark” when we speak about this fish, but how many did you know that in the 17th century, they were called “sea dogs” by the pirates?!

The word shark has an uncertain etymology. Some say it comes from the mayan word “xok”, pronounced “shock”, and other sources say that in 1569, the word “sharke”, was used to point the big fish in the Carribbean seas.

Some anatomy now:

What makes the sharks so famous, as you could read at the beginning, is their capacity to swim with great speeds and of course, their ferocity.

Because they do not have a gas filled bladder, like most fish, and instead rely on their liver for buoyancy, sharks show us another trick up their sleeve. And let’s not forget: their gills help them to get that much needed oxygen from the seawater.

Sharks are intelligent creatures, and highly social. Groups of over 100 were caught on tape while playing, showing their playful mood as well.

So try not to see the shark only as a vicious killer, because that is just one side of him. One side, developed over the years just to survive. There are non-carnivorous sharks, you know…