Planet of the apex: test your shark knowledge with our fin-tastic quiz

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July 12, 2020

What is the collective noun for sharks?

A shiver of sharks

A conspiracy of sharks

A suit of sharks

An armoury of sharks

Which of these sharks is no fairytale?

Troll

Elf

Goblin

Loch Ness

Swell sharks can swallow water to make themselves appear bigger, and bark like a dog when lifted out of the water. They also give off an ethereal green glow: why?

Toxic chemical spills have turned them green

They eat a lot of bioluminescent plankton

So they can identify each other in the dark

They have faint genetic links to an alien species

A celebrity great white shark known as Katherine, with 60,000 Twitter followers, works the waters off the North American coast. When she’s not breaking the internet (OK, the OCEARCH shark tracker site) with her location pings, she’s providing crucial learning about the mating habits of sexually mature great whites. How long is the gestation period for great white pups?

18 months Great whites have a gestation period similar to Asian elephants. Pregnant great whites are known to swim thousands of miles to nursery sites, one of which was discovered off Long Island, New York, in 2016

3 months

4 years

Nothing – they lay eggs

Which of these characters from JR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has a shark namesake?

Sauron

Frodo

Gandalf

Gollum Taxonomist Leonard Compagno named this group of groundsharks in 1973, noting that they bear ‘some resemblance in form and habits’ to the Tolkien character

Which of the following is untrue about the song Baby Shark (YouTube views as of publication: 5.9bn)?

It is a tried-and-tested song for setting the pace of CPR

People have reported that listening to the song backwards reveals satanic messages

It was sung at a protest in Lebanon to soothe a toddler in his mum’s car

No one knows who created (and can be blamed for) the original baby shark

The mako shark is the ocean’s fastest, able to swim as fast as 35mph. What unusual attribute contributes to its speed?

It uses its fins in a propeller motion

It blows water backwards from its mouth

It builds speed by leaping out of the water

It is partially warm-blooded While most sharks are cold-blooded, makos are endotherms (partially warm blooded), which affords them explosive power and speed. Great whites share this quality

Frilled sharks are one of the oldest species of shark in the world – mysterious ocean bottom-dwellers that resemble a cross between an eel and a shark. When do experts estimate this species appeared?

65 million years ago – around the time a mass extinction wiped out the dinosaurs

25 million years ago – when apes diverged from old world monkeys

95 million years ago – in the last portion of ‘the age of dinosaurs’ They are known as living fossils. A warning about Googling them: their weird appearance might haunt your dreams

200 million years ago – when the supercontinent Pangea began to break up

Which shark takes cylindrical chunks of flesh out of its prey – often much larger sharks and whales?

Cookie-cutter shark

Gulper shark

Sponge-sucker shark

Lemon shark

What did Donald Trump once tweet about sharks?

Every time I speak of sharks I do so with great love and affection. They cannot help the fact that they were born fucked up!

Obama’s wind turbines kill millions of sharks in sharknados every year. The Paris climate agreement hurts Americans, sharks, and costs a fortune

Sharks are last on my list – other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!

Sharks only bite do-nothing Democrats! Swim faster LOSERS!

What method of repelling sharks is being trialled in Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean?

Magnets disguised as kelp

‘Scaresharks’- giant inflatable sharks

Nets baited with chum

Playing jazz underwater

The tasselled wobbegong is often found on coral reefs or near the shore in Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. What trick does it use to catch its food?

Vigorously shakes its tassels to cause underwater waves to dislodge prey

Filters fish and plankton through its open mouth as it moves

Squirts a cloud of noxious gas to confuse its prey

Camouflages itself as coral and wobbles its tail back and forth in a mesmerising dance to lure fish

Which of the following most accurately resembles how the skin of most sharks would feel under your hand?

Silk

Leather

Sandpaper Sharks are covered with dermal denticles – tooth-like structures that decrease drag to help the shark swim faster and more quietly

Scales

Miss Helen, a female grey horn shark, was abducted from a US aquarium in 2018. How did they smuggle her out?

Pretended she was a toy from the gift shop

Dressed her up as an employee

Wheeled her out in a baby’s pram CCTV footage showed Miss Helen being grabbed from an open pool and wrapped in a wet blanket before being wheeled away. She was found and returned to San Antonio aquarium days later, where staff said she was recovering well from the shock

Pretended to impound Miss Helen as evidence in a fake cocaine bust

Sharks are often caught as bycatch in the Mediterranean. According to the Italian coast guard and experts, what is shortfin mako or blue shark often fraudulently sold as?

Swordfish

Calamari

Chicken

Tuna

What are the ampullae of Lorenzini?

A species of shark found in the Mediterranean

The top sharks in a group that hunt together

Roman shark gods

The system of electromagnetic receptors on a shark’s snout Sharks’ heads and snouts are covered with a network of pores that detect tiny electrical signals. Rubbing a shark on the nose can induce a trance-like state (though we wouldn’t recommend trying this), while punching it is said to help to stop an attack. Sharks’ ampullae network is named after Stefano Lorenzini, the Italian scientist who discovered it in 1678

Fish are friends (sometimes). There are many examples of sharks enjoying a gentler relationship with their surroundings than their reputation as mindless killers would suggest. Which of the following is untrue?

Remora fish hitch rides on some shark species

Dolphins and sharks often work together to corner schools of fish Dolphins and sharks often compete for the same food sources, so while each species tends to mind their own business, they don’t work together. Sharks sometimes fare badly in encounters with dolphins, which may ram them if they feel threatened

Sharks allow pilot fish to swim inside their mouths to pick food from their teeth

Bonnethead sharks munch on seagrass

What have scientists never seen a whale shark do?

Give birth The mating and birthing cycle of these gentle giants remains shrouded in mystery

Surface

Change direction

Feed

What great white shark mystery is concerning experts in Cape Town, South Africa?

They found a skeleton of one on Table Mountain

They’ve all disappeared Not long ago, there were 200 or so sightings a year. Last year there wasn’t one. Experts believe longline fishing, pollution or the arrival of orcas may be keeping them away

They’ve been propelling themselves on to beaches

They’re eating the base of the harbour walls

In May, customs officials made the biggest shark fin seizure in Hong Kong history: 26 tonnes, in two shipping containers from Ecuador. How many sharks were the fins taken from?

500

38,500

2,000

17,500

You got…

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