Frilled Shark

Fascinating facts about the Frilled Shark

• The frilled shark's family lineage stretches back to the Carboniferous period, so its body has remained remarkably unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. Its eel-like shape, dark-brown colour and the unusual amphistyly joint that links the jaws directly to the cranium are all primitive features. Even its length of about 2.0 m matches the ancient design that first appeared in the fossil record.
• When hunting, the frilled shark anchors its tail against a rock and undulates like an eel, lunging forward to seize prey. Its jaws are long and highly flexible, equipped with about 300 recurved, needle-like teeth that can snap shut on items larger than the shark itself. This combination lets it swallow whole cephalopods, small sharks and bony fish in a single gulp, a feeding style shared with few other deep-sea predators.
• Frilled sharks are aplacental viviparous, meaning the embryos develop inside egg capsules within the mother's body without a placenta. The gestation can last up to 3.5 years, after which the mother gives birth to a litter ranging from two to fifteen pups. During development the young remain inside the capsules, feeding on yolk until they emerge fully formed. This prolonged, placenta-free pregnancy results in relatively few, but well-developed offspring.
• The frilled shark has been retrieved from a depth of 1,570 m, but it is rarely found deeper than 1,200 m. In most of its range it stays much shallower, and in Japan's Suruga Bay it is most abundant between 50 m and 200 m. It is commonly taken as by-catch in commercial trawls, where its flesh is sold for meat and processed into fishmeal, giving it modest economic value.
• Each night the frilled shark undertakes a diel vertical migration, rising from the deep sea floor to the surface to hunt. It feeds on cephalopods, small sharks and bony fish.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Frilled Shark

In the dark, mysterious depths of the ocean, the frilled shark glides with a mesmerizing elegance, its long, slender body undulating like a ghostly serpent as it navigates the desolate seafloor. With its mouth agape, revealing a cavernous maw lined with razor-sharp teeth, this ancient predator patrols the shadows, a relic of a bygone era, its very existence a testament to the unyielding power of evolution. As it moves, its gill slits flutter like a delicate fringe, a hypnotic spectacle that belies the formidable reputation of this deep-sea hunter.

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