Hello and welcome to another Fun Fact From Flora ,
I would say sorry for doing another one about fish, but you know who I am and you know what I"m like and so you know what you signed up for.
No you cannot unsubscribe. ** This is about the amazing and elusive megamouth shark.
They have these slightly weird looking massive mouths and generally look kind of comical. Less stealth-killer-shark and more blobfish.
I think the Wikipedia page sums it up quite nicely: a relatively poor swimmer, the megamouth has a soft, flabby body and a long, wide, bulbous head. It swims at an average speed of about 2 km per hour.
It is the smallest of the three planktivorous sharks , the others being basking sharks and whale sharks , reaching a maximum of about 5m. It was only discovered in 1976 , which really is not very long ago at all (as I"m sure Chris and Clare would be able to confirm). Amazingly, when it was discovered this shark was not only a new species , but also a new genus and a whole new family.
This makes it, along with the coelacanth (which is another phenomenal fish that might need its own fun fact), one of the two major excitements for the world’s fish nerds in the 20th century.
As of 2018, only 99 individuals had been caught or sighted ever. Isn’t that crazy?? We know so little about this fabulous oddity.
What I did find though, was an amazing encounter where a scuba diver was lucky enough to see one during the day in Komodo, Indonesia.
IMAGINE HOW BLOWN YOUR MIND WOULD BE.
Okay you"ll have to imagine how blown my mind would be.
Another cool thing that they have is these crazy white bands on their upper lip. This white band, hidden in a groove between their snout and the jaw, is only visible when their upper jaw is stickin" out.
Scientists got to thinking that this is probably linked to feeding.
Some research carried out by a team of Belgian scientists found that, instead of producing light like some people thought, the band seems to be super reflective. This means it even reflects the light produced by bioluminescent planktonic prey.
So whilst it first SEEMED like it was producing light, it is just so reflective it bounces back almost any light that reaches it. This probably then attracts MORE plankton. Neat, right?
Hope you enjoyed another weirdo from the sea (and I"m not talking about me).
Lots of love,
Flora
