Cookiecutter shark
Isistius brasiliensis
Size, compared with you
You: 1.7 m. Cookiecutter shark: 56 cm.
Pocket-sized. Grows up to about 56 cm.
A small, cigar-shaped shark that spends the day deep down and rises toward the surface at night. It takes neat, round bites out of bigger animals, which leave marks like cookie-cutter holes.
The weird bit
In the 1970s its bites damaged the rubber sonar domes of US Navy submarines, and nobody knew what was doing it until the shark was identified.
Quick facts
- Where it lives
- Open ocean, Deep sea0 to 3,700 m down
- What it eats
- Cuts round plugs of flesh from whales and large fish; also eats squid
- How worried are we?
- Doing okay (Least Concern)Assessed in 2017 by the IUCN Red List.