Swimming with Giants: Hammerhead Sharks in their Ocean Kingdom

Hammerhead sharks have a very interesting head shape. This sleek, elegant predator has one hell of a look about it, but for good reason. This is a highly-adapted animal that evolved over 20 million years to sense its surroundings in ways that no other shark can.

If you’re looking for facts on the size, habitat, nature and even attacks on people, you’re in the right place! But more than this, we’re going to take a look at three unique adaptations that explain why the hammerhead is so special-looking, and what it means for the survival of such a special, yet highly endangered animal.

Hammerheads come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Well, a variety of sizes, at least. The bonnethead is one of the smallest hammerhead species and usually reaches lengths of less than a meter (or 3 feet). On the other hand, the largest species is the great hammerhead shark, which can reach a maximum length of 20 feet (that’s about 6 meters) from tail to snout and weigh up to 1,500 pounds (or 680 kg).

It’s thought that hammerheads usually live for 20 to 30 years. However, they can live for up to 40 years in very rare cases, but these things are notoriously hard to figure out for marine biologists. Wild sharks come and go across vast distances and aren’t that easy to track, so ages are usually estimated by counting the rings on vertebrae, just like we age trees.

Captive hammerheads have been very difficult to please and when kept in an aquarium, they often don’t fare well, so there’s no certain way of telling how long they might live if their conditions were better. Therefore, they do usually get older in the wild if they are not hunted down as a juvenile.
The diversity in hammerhead species matches the diversity in their habitats.

These are pretty cosmopolitan sharks, choosing to occupy waters that are temperate or tropical. Hammerhead sharks can be found on the coasts of every continent on earth, except Antarctica. They typically prefer coastal regions and are usually not found too far away from the coast.

Some species take part in epic migrations and mass mating events, in which countless thousands of hammerheads travel in schools together. This is where one of the adaptations on that enormous head comes into play.

As they school together, it’s thought that these sharks make use of a particular curvature of their heads, known as a cephalofoil, to generate lift – just like a wing – and this helps them conserve energy staying afloat as they cruise by in huge numbers.

This breath-taking scene is a great example of social behaviour among an order of fish that is better known for being lone hunters. For the most part, though, they’ll stick to shallower waters around the coast as already mentioned. Why? Because this is where they’ll best be able to use that notorious head.

Here’s where things get really interesting. The hammerhead isn’t just some unfortunate mutant of the sea, its look serves a legitimate purpose. Let’s break it down. Hammerheads have small mouths, so this limits the size of what they can eat.

These sharks will chow down on crustaceans, squid, smaller fish, or anything they can get their teeth into, including other hammerheads! In very rare cases, they have also been seen biting into seagrass. In fact, they were the first shark to have been discovered eating vegetables. That’s, however, extremely rare, but it does happen.

They do also commonly hunt and eat stingrays, and this is where the second amazing adaptation on the face of a hammerhead comes in handy. A smaller cousin of the sharks, rays are flattened, cartilaginous fishes that like to hide under the sand. While they’re invisible to most, the hammerheads have figured out a way of detecting them.

Using that enormous face, they scan the surface of the ocean like a metal detector, and an array of gel-filled pores on the surface of the hammer picks up the faintest of electrical signals beneath the sand. Finally, the odd position of the eyes is the third fantastic trait that makes hammerheads unique. This gives them a very broad field of vision and allows them to snap their heads around quickly to grab prey as it tries to flee.

Larry G. Jones

Видео Swimming with Giants: Hammerhead Sharks in their Ocean Kingdom канала Jinzo X