Basking Shark Facts
Basking Shark Facts
2. They use their huge mouths to take in water filled with millions of tiny plankton - this gets trapped in comb-like structures in their gills.
3. They can filter the amount of water in an Olympic sized swimming pool in just 1 hour!
4. They have a very good sense of smell and can detect electrical activity in the water-this is most likely how they can find their food.
5. Gestation takes 18 months - 3 years
6. Newborn basking sharks are thought to be about 1.5m long and have strange ‘piggy’ noses.
7. When at the sea surface they usually move slowly, with the dorsal fin showing most of the time. They look like they are ‘basking’ in the sun.
8. Basking shark skin is covered in a thick oily slime to help protect against parasites.
9. Their skin is rough in one direction, as it is made from millions of tiny overlapping teeth, called denticles.
10. Despite being so large, basking sharks only have tiny eyes and a very small brain.
11. Basking sharks may live up to 50 years.
12. Although they don’t use them for eating, basking sharks have about 1500 tiny teeth.
13. Basking sharks are easiest to see on flat calm days, when the water has oily looking slicks across it.
14. The basking shark has gray skin. It has no teeth. The basking shark is very big. It lives in cold and warm water off the coasts of South America, North America, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe.
15. It eats plankton, krill, and tiny squid.
16. It is a predator. It is not the prey.
17. The basking shark needs lots of water and food to survive in its habitat.
18. The basking shark is very calm.
19. It can have 5 babies at a time.
20. The basking shark swims with it’s mouth open for 20 minutes and shuts it for 10 seconds.
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