What is mutualism?

1. What is mutualism? • The mutual beneficial association between different kinds of organisms • The shark benefits the remora and the pilot fish by giving them protection and providing them with food scraps. The remora helps the shark by eating the tiny parasites which grow on a shark’s skin.

2. What is a baby shark called?

3. Where is the lateral line on a shark? • It is located on both sides of the shark’s body – running from the snout to the tail, just under the shark’s skin.

4. What is the purpose/function of the lateral line? • If you wiggle your hand in a sink full of water, you can feel the water motion you create. A shark senses prey in the distance by detecting water movement made by fish or other swimming prey. Sharks have a special system, called a lateral line, that picks up the vibrations in the water. This narrow strip of sensory cells runs along the sides of the body and into the head. Sharks use the lateral line to detect the erratic motions of sick or wounded prey (easy-to-catch meals) when they are about three to 10 feet away.

5. What are denticles? • Denticles are teeth like scales covering a shark’s body. Denticles are mainly used for protection and aids in streamline swimming.

6. Why do most sharks have to swim at all times? • Sharks are fish, and virtually all fish breathe through the use of gills. These are the collection of slit-like openings on the sides of fish, located behind the head. Behind the gills are networks of complex capillaries. These networks of tiny blood vessels withdraw oxygen from the water as it passes over them. • Bony fish have swim bladders (which inflate like a balloon) so that they can hover motionless in the water. But most sharks do not have swim bladders. Their constant motion allows water to pass through their gills so that they can breathe. • Most species of shark breathe by swimming, using the forward motion to pass water over their gills. These sharks must be in constant forward motion, or they will suffocate.

7. What is the function of the spiral valve? • This is the lower part of the shark’s intestine that is corkscrew in shape. In the spiral valve, food is broken down into its basic parts, or nutrients.

8. What is the function of the ampullae of Lorenzini? • These are tiny pores covering the snout of the shark that detect electrical impulses in the water. These pores can help a shark locate prey, orient themselves, and detect changes in water temperature.

9. What is the function of the spiracle? • The spiracle is an opening just behind the eye in many sharks (and all rays) that allows water into the gills while the shark is eating (or while the ray is buried in sand).

10. Where is Sharktooth Hill? • It is found in Kern County in Bakersfield, California

11. What is unusual about the Lake Nicaragua Shark? • The Lake Nicaragua Shark (also called the bull shark) is unusual because it has adapted to living in freshwater. It is found in Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America.

12. What is a feeding frenzy? • A shark feeding frenzy occurs when a number of sharks fight for the same prey. Sharks are usually solitary diners, and a feeding frenzy indicates why that might be. To an observer, it looks like the sharks lose their mind biting at anything that's in their way in an uncontrollable rage. They thrash around, their snouts elevating and their backs arching, all signs that indicate an impending attack. Some accounts tell of sharks eating each other and of sharks continuing to feed even after they've been disemboweled by other sharks.

13. What are barbels? • Nasal barbels are sensory projections near the nostrils and mouth of some sharks (e.g., the nurse shark). These barbels are whisker-like feelers used to taste and feel.

14. What sharks have barbels? • Nurse shark • Barbeledhounstooth shark • Carpet shark • Sawtooth shark • Angel shark

15. What does viviparous mean? • Viviparous means producing live young instead of eggs (like humans).

16. What does oviparous mean? • Oviparous means producing eggs that develop and hatch outside the maternal body (like birds).

17. What does ovoviviparous mean? • Ovoviviparous means producing eggs that are hatched within the body of the mother shark and then born alive.

18. What does oophagus mean? • Oophagus literally means “egg eating”. It happens in some species of sharks when unborn pups eat the unfertilized eggs released by the mother.

19. What is a mermaid’s purse? • This is a name sometimes given to the egg cases of sharks such as the swell shark and the angel shark. The egg case is shaped like a piece of kelp with a drawstring. One baby shark grows inside it.

20. What is rugae? • These are the folds inside the stomach that aid in the absorption of food.

21. What are some facts about the megaladon? • Megalodonwas a giant shark that lived between 2 million and 16 million years ago. • Little is known for sure about these giant predators because all that remains of their existence are fossilized teeth. But what teeth they are! These giant shark teeth range in size from 3 inches long to 7 inches long. • Adults were 55 to 60 feet long and weighed as much as 100 tons. • They probably dined on whales. • Megalodon had a truly global distribution, terrorizing whales in warm-water oceans all over the world.

22. What interactions might sharks have with humans? • Fisheries • Shark attacks • Sport fishing and commercial fishing • Conservation and research

23. What are the conditions under which most shark attacks occur? • Warm, shallow water • Shiny objects • Diving in deep coral seas or wreck sites (their territory) • Splashing • Time of day (dusk or dawn) • Resembling prey • Murky water, blood, swimming around their food source, teasing or bothering the shark

24. What are the predators of sharks? • Humans and other sharks