20 THINGS
YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT
SHARKS
1 - The great white shark can smell blood from over 3000 miles away which means that they can pretty much smell it full time unless they have a cold. Adult sharks will actually try to catch a cold by swimming down into deep water without wearing a jacket just so they can have a little break from smelling blood 24/7
2 - A lemon shark can smell one drop of blood in an Olympic size swimming pool which is a useless skill because the shark never get into an Olympic swimming pool because Olympic swimming pools are rarely built in the middle of the sea
3- A shark can detect the electrical impulse emitted by a standard AA battery one mile away, unless the battery is from Poundstretcher, in which case not even a small clock would be able to detect it, even when the battery has been connected
4 - Much like a tree, you can tell how old a shark is by counting the rings on its vertebrae. They are different from trees in other ways though. Sharks don’t have leaves and unlike trees it’s very difficult to set a shark on fire
5- Sharks think about sex every 5 seconds which is even more often than human men and must be very annoying because sharks can’t even have sex, unless you count blowing your beans into a bunch of eggs that have been buried in the sand, sex
6- Whale sharks, though completely harmless to humans, eat millions of tiny fish every year via a process called ‘passive feeding’. The only shark responsible for more deaths per year is the loan shark which prays on its victims by encouraging them to take out high interest loans using low budget, daytime television adverts. The loan shark will then start threatening to send the boys round until the victim inevitably takes their own life
7- The hammerhead shark is worshipped as a god by the staff of multinational DIY and home improvement retailer, B&Q. The employees gather in a back room every morning and pray to the underwater deity in a ritual that often involves chanting and blood sacrifice
8 - The largest shark that ever existed was the Megalodon which lived 3.6 million years ago and could have grown to be as big as 98ft in length. Its jaws would have been as big as Tower Bridge and just one of it’s teeth would have been the same size as the Etihad Stadium. If it had had legs then each one would have been as tall as the Eiffel Tower
9- During the filming of Jaws the actor Robert Shaw (who played Quint) was in fact eaten by a real life shark whilst the rubber model was being repaired on the beach. Spielberg kept the cameras rolling and encouraged Richard Dreyfus and Roy Scheider to carry on acting as Shaw was devoured and eaten in front of them
10 - A shark may lose and grow up to 1000 teeth a year. If humans could do the same then there would be no such thing as plastic toothbrushes which are, ironically, polluting the world’s oceans and killing up to 1000 sharks a year
11- The Greenland shark is the oldest known vertebrate on Earth, and some are thought to have been alive for more than 500 years, which means they would have been around in the time of William Shakespeare. Greenland sharks would have struggled to get a role in one of The Bard’s plays however, as they have usually been blinded by parasites and there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that they can speak English
12 - The shortfin mako is on record as the fastest-swimming shark. It is capable of bursts of speed up to 18.8 metres per second and can accelerate even faster than television presenter Ant McPartlin after a boozy lunch
13- Tiger shark teeth are strong and sharp enough to tear their way through the vulcanised rubber consistency of an 8oz sirloin steak from Wetherspoons
14- A card shark is someone who uses skill and deception to win at cards, though this will usually result in them losing absolutely everything they own and wind up trying to tear their way through the vulcanised rubber consistency of an 8oz sirloin steak in Wetherspoons
15- Statistically, you are more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by a shark. Only one person has been recorded as being killed by both simultaneously. In 1952, Ian Pin, a coconut shy operator at Bertram’s Circus in Coney Island was knocked on the head by one of his coconuts and fell into a tank full of sharks that was due to be used in a magic trick by the great Harry Houdini
16- Like Victoria Beckham, a large great white shark can go a full three months between meals
17 - Shark fins are believed in Chinese culture to have properties of boosting sexual potency, but they don’t and anyone who thinks they do is wrong
18 - Professional Australian golfer, Greg Norman is nicknamed ‘The Great White Shark’ due to his pale hair and aggressive golf style. Also, on more than one occasion, he has been seen tossing seal lions around on the green with his snout before feasting on their thick blubbery flesh
19 - The world’s smallest shark, the pygmy shark, is just six inches long when fully grown which means it isn’t really a shark and is quite obviously just a fish. It’s basically the same as saying that tomatoes are actually a fruit when they’re quite obviously a vegetable
20 - The longest migration documented in sharks is a great white that traveled 12,400 miles from South Africa to Australia and back in less than nine months but still managed to return with a slight Australian accent which caused his friends to take the piss out of him and call him a bellend
