Silky shark
Carcharhinus falciformis
Size, compared with you
You: 1.7 m. Silky shark: 3.5 m.
Bigger than a car. Grows up to about 3.5 m.
A sleek open-ocean shark named for its smooth, shiny skin. It lives in warm waters and often follows schools of tuna.
The weird bit
A silky shark can hear low rumbling sounds from hundreds of metres away, which lets it find feeding birds and dolphins.
Quick facts
- Where it lives
- Open ocean, Coral reef0 to 500 m down
- What it eats
- Tuna, mackerel and sardines, plus squid and swimming crabs
- How worried are we?
- In trouble (Vulnerable)Assessed in 2017 by the IUCN Red List.