lauttimur.com - Shark often be picture as blood-thirst animal, but in reality they are more fascinating than we thought. Some sharks even would swims away if they encountered with human. Shark live all over the world from tropical waters to polar seas, some sharks species even can travel to the freshwater. Unlike other fish that have one gill slits on each side of the body, shark can have up to five gill slits on each side their body. As we know that fish is breathing through their gill as the water carry oxygen and the gill will extract the oxygen, some shark have to keep moving in able to keep water flowing through their gill or else they will suffocate.
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Thanks to their adaptation, shark is one of the fastest swimmers in the ocean. This is happened because they have unique skin which made up from small v-shape scale. This rows of scale are smooth in one direction, but feels like sandpaper if you “pet” it from tail to head. Those scale structure helps shark reduce friction to the water when they swims, allowing their swimming to be more efficient. Most of the sharks have slim, torpedo-shape like body that helps them move faster through the water. In matter helping their buoyancy, shark have very large-fatty liver that allowing them to keep floating in water colomn.
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There are over 500 species of sharks with many different size and shapes. Whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the largest shark kind that can grow up to 12 meters. Despite their big body size, whale shark is filter feeder which mean they obtain food by filtering the water as they swims by. Whale sharks also have nickname as gentle giant because their calm behaviour. For that reason whale shark has become tourist attraction, but you must keep in mind that even if they don’t act aggressive you should still keep distance to watch them because you don’t want to get hit by their huge tail.