Friday, March 2, 2012

Greenland Shark the Squatch of the Sea




What's big, old, crusty looking, and lives in the deep cold waters off the shores of Greenland? No, it's not a mermaid, or merman, and its not the aquatic sasquatch. It is one of the coolest sharks ever, the massive Greenland shark(Somniosus microcephalus).These giant fish grow 20+ ft (7m) in length, and can weigh up to 1,400kg, that's over 3000 lbs folks!


What's cool about these monsters is you probably never heard of them, unless you're some fancy marine biologist, or some one who reads books. The reason being, most likely is that the Greenland shark has yet to acheive the same media success as Great Whites or Tiger sharks. You're probably thinking, well thats because they are not awesome maneaters like the two aforementioned bad asses. 

You may also view them as big boring sharks like the whale shark or basking shark. Wrong! Some people might assume they only eat little weak stuff that just gets sucked down through a big gaping maw. Nope, wrong again! These bad boys have teeth and have been known to eat big fish, seals, and even reindeer. Stated differently, if they wanted to they could eat people which should be encouraged by their PR guys. 

Other cool aspects of these sharks include, a lifespan of up to 200 years, poison skin, similar to that of merpeople(allegedly) and a little parasitic buddy that burrows it self into the shark's eye. They don't even complain about the little dude. All in all these sharks are big bad high speed operators even though they swim kinda slow.



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