24 A2+ shark attack

CHAPTER 1 Shark Facts MYTH: ALL SHARKS ARE LARGE AND GRAY WITH BIG TEETH. In 1995, John McCosker and his team were near the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. They were trying to catch small, spotted ocean animals. They were studying these unusual animals because they thought they might be a new species of shark. It took a long time. They studied the animals until 2012! Finally, with DNA testing, they found out the animals are a new species. They're a kind of catshark. We now know of about 400 species of sharks, and scientists are finding new species all the time. Species can be very different from each other. For example, the whale shark can grow to be 20 meters long and 100 years old. The dogfish shark is much shorter— about 20 centimeters long, and it only lives for about 16 years.

These are some of the more usual species of sharks.

Sharks can be very different, but they all have one thing in common: a lot of teeth. They have rows of teeth under each other, so when teeth fall out, new ones are already in place. Many sharks have hundreds of teeth, but the whale shark has thousands! One whale shark can have more than 30,000 teeth in its life! The whale shark is huge, and on its back it has yellow spots. In Spanish, the whale shark is called dominö, because its spots look like the dots in the game dominoes. In Java, it is called geger lintang, which means "stars in the back." And in Kenya, it is called papa shilingi. A shilingi is a silver coin. An old story says that coins were thrown from the sky and landed on the big whale shark, giving it spots.

Because sharks have so many teeth, it's not surprising that people often find shark teeth on the beach. By studying fossilized shark teeth, scientists found out that sharks are a very old species. They have been in the oceans for over 400 million years. They are older than dinosaurs! Maybe it's because they have been around for so long, or because they are dangerous, or because they can be so huge, but no matter what the reason, sharks are important to people around the world.

CHAPTER 2 People Eaters MYTH: ALL SHARKS ARE DANGEROUS ANIMALS THAT ATTACK AND KILL PEOPLE. When many people think of sharks, they think of the 1975 movie Jaws. People in the movie are swimming and playing in the ocean. People in the movie theater see a shark fin on the screen. Then they hear scary music... DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN. Suddenly, a great white shark attacks the swimmers! It's not only movies that make sharks look scary. TV shows do as well. For one week every year, the Discovery Channel's Shark Week has show after show about shark attacks. People love it! But, because of movies and television, many people are afraid of sharks. They think that all sharks want to eat people. It is true that some sharks eat people, but we are certainly not their main source of food.

Many sharks don't eat people at all. For example, the whale shark only eats small things in the ocean that are not any bigger than a person's finger! In fact, people hurt sharks more than sharks hurt people. Each year, only 5 to 15 people in the world die because of shark attacks. However, 20 to 100 million sharks die every year because people kill them. Some are killed for food, and others are killed in nets when fishermen are trying to catch other fish. In some species, the number of sharks has fallen by 50 percent. Some sharks, like angel sharks, are already endangered, and others, like great white sharks and whale sharks, may soon become endangered.