Megamouth shark
Megachasma pelagios
Size, compared with you
You: 1.7 m. Megamouth shark: 5.5 m.
Bigger than a car. Grows up to about 5.5 m.
A very rare, big, filter-feeding shark with an enormous mouth. Only a few hundred have ever been caught or seen, so we still know very little about it.
The weird bit
The first one ever found, in 1976, was tangled in the anchor of a US Navy research ship off Hawaii. Nobody even knew the species existed before that.
Quick facts
- Where it lives
- Open ocean, Deep seaDown to 1,500 m
- What it eats
- Krill, jellyfish, shrimp larvae and other tiny animals filtered from the water
- How worried are we?
- Doing okay (Least Concern)Assessed in 2018 by the IUCN Red List.