The creature of the moment: The basking shark
(Cetorhinus maximus)
Aka my favorite animal
Basking sharks, a slow moving migratory shark, are the ocean's 2nd largest fish growing to be as long as 40ft.
Their common name "basking" shark comes from their habit to swim close to the surface, aka seeming to be "basking" in the sun
They travel in pairs or in large groups of up to 100+.
They are not a well researched species due to their low numbers, and their size does prove it impossible to study them in a lab setting. What is known is that they may be long lived (reaching 50 years of age), live in arctic and temperate waters, and that they are under the order lanniformes.
The lamniforme order contains many of the most well known sharks, (like great whites, threshers, basking sharks, makos, etc), and has an interesting ability to retain metabolic heat, a trait that other orders of sharks do not obtain and makes them functionally warm blooded.
Though little is known about their life history, it is theorized that they may be ovoviviparous as that is a lamniforme trait as well. It is also believed that they have a lengthy maturation time and a gestation of possibly 3 years.
The basking shark feeds by filtering feeding through gill rakers, filtering out 2,000 tons of water within their gills per hour.
Another unknown about basking sharks is their breaching behavior. They have been shown breaching out of the water, which takes many by surprise by the power needed for such a large animal to do. The reason has a few theories, however none have been completely proven. These include being a mating ritual for males to jump and essentially show off to prospective mates. Another is to kill parasites by crushing them by the force.
Historically, they were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1800's. Most fish have a gas bladder to control their buoyancy, but sharks have an oily and nutrient rich liver that keeps them buoyant instead. The basking shark was hunted for this liver to use as oil to keep lights running. Other reasons were to use the skin as sand paper due to their rough skin, fins for food and in some countries as an aphrodisiacs, and to protect the fishers' nets as they get tangled in.
Luckily, conservation efforts have been underway to protect them and they are now under "vulnerable" on IUCN's red list.
They have also fooled people plenty of times into thinking that they were sea serpents (in this case sharks cruising in single file), and most notably mistaken for pleisiosaur carcasses. The latter being due to the way they decompose - the skull is small compared to the body length of the shark- making people not even think it was a shark.
Overall, basking sharks are a peaceful species, large, and sometimes looks rather derpy. It's why they're my favorite, along with the mysteries still surrounding their behavior and biology.
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