Whale shark: gentle big fish

What is the biggest fish? The answer is the whale shark. Whale sharks are not whales, but sharks, belonging to cartilage fish. Whale sharks can reach up to 20 meters, and the most heavier can reach more than 30 tons, which is equivalent to 10 elephants. Although it is a shark, the whale shark does not make the animals in the sea as frightened like the big white shark, but a big fish with a good temper. It has a flat head and small eyes, with a huge and neat 5 pair of gill cracks next to the eyes, and the blue -gray back with white spots like stars. These spots are like human fingerprints. Each whale shark has unique spots. Scientists can identify different whale sharks through these spots. Some people think that whale sharks can also use these spots to identify companions and communicate with their companions; others believe that these spots may be the strong sunshine of whale sharks to the surface layer of the seawater, which can help the skin to resist ultraviolet damage.

Whale Shark (data map)

With a gentle personality and soft appearance, the whale shark is not suitable for a predator chasing prey. The same is true, whale sharks are filter -eating fish. It was not yawning when it opened his mouth, but was tasting food. The whale shark's mouth was 1.5 meters wide when it opened. It takes a deep breath, leaves the food with a gill rake, and discharge the seawater. It can open his mouth while swimming, let the sea water pour in the mouth by the way, and eat food by itself. Eat well, thanks to the good mouth. Whale sharks have about 300 rows of teeth, as well as gill rakes that are staggered. The efficiency of filtering food is very high, and it does not refuse to come to food with more than 2 mm diameter. Therefore, whale sharks can not only eat sardines, squids, etc., but also can eat floats such as shrimp and sea sheath.

The body is so large and there are a lot of foods. Therefore, the coral reef waters with rich sources of food are places preferred by whale sharks. The whale shark opened a big mouth in the coral reef waters, and it was almost a meal. Whale sharks are distributed in subtropical and tropical waters. Every summer, whale sharks gather in groups in the Oceania and the Philippine waters. Adult whale sharks are very friendly to humans; young whale sharks are more afraid of people, and they will avoid people from seeing people.

Whale Shark is a fish -born fish. Baby Whale Shark has grown up in her mother's belly, and she can reach half a meter long as soon as she was born.

Whale Shark (data map)

It is not easy to grow up in the vast ocean. Although there are very few natural enemies of whale sharks, raising whale sharks is time -consuming and labor -intensive, so the number of whale sharks in nature is not large. Human killing is the biggest threat to the survival of whale sharks. Some whale sharks are caught by humans into food, and some whale sharks are sent to the aquarium. Due to human killings, the number of whale sharks has declined year by year, and the IUCN red list has been listed as an endangered level.

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