Shark Research

Shark Research

Longevity

The research that has been done on sharks from the remains of their teeth indicate that they have been around for about 450 million years. They have been able to successfully evolve. This means they are one of the longest known living creatures on the face of the Earth. Researchers also wanted to find out how long they live in their natural environment.

On average the life span for a shark is 25-40 years. This can vary depending on if their environment offers them what they need to survive. Due to the hobby of shark hunting many of them don’t get the chance to live that long. A few of the species have been known to have sharks living to be around 100 years old.

Sharks and Dolphins

Sharks have very few predators out there in the water so they are free to do as they people. Their biggest threat is humans who hunt them for sport, to eat, and to use their bodies for various types of items they manufacture. However, there has been some research that indicates sharks are afraid of dolphins.

This type of research was conducted after dolphins were able to prevent sharks from attacking humans. Some research indicates that it is the sounds that the dolphins make that keep the sharks away. It isn’t that they are afraid but that they are confused by the sounds or that they don’t like them. Therefore they go the other direction to get away from them. Not all sharks are afraid of dolphins though. In fact there are many documented cases where a dolphin has served as a tasty meal for a shark.

Mating

One area of shark research that hasn’t gotten too much attention has to do with mating. The males use clasps to inject sperm into the females so that the pups can be conceived. When there aren’t any males around though some females are able to reproduce asexually. This has been researched with some species of sharks while the females were in captivity.

The male and female go their separate ways once they have mated. There is no long courtship or relationship. The female with either give birth to her pups or she will lay eggs. Either way she doesn’t stick around to form any type of bond with her young at all.

Sharks and People

Due to the bad publicity that sharks get, many in society have them pegged as cold blooded killers. Yet the research that has been conducted indicates that isn’t the case at all. It is believed sharks may mistake people for food and therefore want to take a bite. There are only a handful of shark species that are aggressive enough to really be attacking everything in site. For the most part though sharks aren’t out there to attack people. They will leave them alone for the most part.

In fact, there is research to indicate that people are more of a threat to sharks than sharks are to people. They numbers of them have significantly dropped due to hunting them for various reasons. The amount of pollution in the water sources including human waste, chemicals, and oil have resulted in a high number of deaths. In fact, there is concern due to the percentage of sharks in the waters dropping drastically over the past decade. We depend on the sharks to help keep the aquatic life in the water balanced.