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The Megamouth shark is a rare deep sea shark with only 39 sightings and 3 on film. It has a huge mouth for filtering organic bits and pieces and is adapted to shallow depths. It is slow-moving and has a fragile skeleton, and gathers food using modified gills called gill rakers. Its discovery in 1979 is compared to the coelacanth fish.
The Megamouth shark is an extremely rare species of deep sea shark. Only 39 specimens have been sighted and only three caught on film. The discovery of the Megamouth shark in 1979, when it was caught on a sea anchor of a US Navy ship off the coast of Hawaii, is often hailed as one of the greatest zoological discoveries of the century. Of well-known species, the megamouth is most closely related to the basking shark.
The first Megamouth shark specimen lifted from depth measured 14.6 feet (4.46 m) and weighed 1,650 pounds (750 kg). Larger specimens have since been found, with a length of up to 5.5 m (18 ft) and a weight of up to 2,679 lb (1,215 kg). As its name suggests, the Megamouth shark has a huge mouth, which it uses to filter the water for organic bits and pieces. The Megamouth shark has anatomical features so different from other sharks, it has been assigned a family, Megachasmidae. The megamouth shark is not the only shark that feeds on filters – basking sharks and whale sharks also use this feeding mechanism – but it is the only known shark adapted to extremely shallow depths, which are characterized by scarce food and darkness. eternal.
Because the deep sea is virtually devoid of nutrients, the Megamouth shark is slow moving and has a fragile skeleton. A Megamouth shark tracked using a tracking device has been shown to swim at an average speed of just 1 mph. Being a filter, however, the Megamouth has little need for bursts of speed. Slow speed isn’t the only major difference between the Megamouth and predatory sharks. Its teeth and its tiny protuberances, neglected by millions of years of adaptation to the benthic environment. It gathers food using modified gills called gill rakers.
The Megamouth shark is an example of a creature as fascinating as various cryptids (such as Bigfoot), but the evidence for its existence is significantly better (it has been photographed up close and even dissected). No one could have suspected its existence in advance, but in 1979 everyone was in for a surprise. Because of its rarity and bizarre appearance, the megamouth has been compared to the living fossil coelacanth fish, which was thought to be extinct for 65 million years until it was found in 1938.
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