Frilled Shark

Fascinating facts about the Frilled Shark

• When a frilled shark's jaw drops, it can unhinge to nearly 120 degrees — wide enough to swallow prey almost as long as its own 2-metre body. The shark uses this ambush tactic in the pitch-black waters 200 to 1,200 metres down, where prey is sparse and every hunting opportunity counts.
• A frilled shark's mouth contains 300 teeth arranged in 25 rows, each tooth backward-curved like a barbed fishhook. These aren't replaced in the neat rotation other sharks use; instead, new teeth grow from the back and migrate forward, a pattern so ancient it mirrors teeth in sharks from 80 million years ago.
• For decades the frilled shark was a phantom — caught so rarely that scientists thought it might be extinct. Then in 2007, dozens washed ashore in Japanese waters, and in 2017 a gravid female was photographed alive off the coast, revealing gestation lasts nearly 3.5 years, longer than any other shark species.
• The frilled shark's eel-like body and flattened head are a deep-sea blueprint: small eyes (light is useless below 1,000 metres), a long tail for steering through crevices, and fin placement low on the body for silent, energy-efficient hunting in a world where meals arrive unpredictably.
• This shark was named for the frilly margin of its gill slits — a single opening on each side, unlike the five separate slits most sharks have. That design hints at its lineage: the frilled shark is a living fossil, virtually unchanged for 80 million years, a window into what the ocean's first sharks might have looked like.

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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