Fish, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 4, 2022

Sharks: Facts about the ocean's apex predators

Long portrayed in pop culture as remorseless people-killers, sharks in reality are no Hollywood monsters. Sharks are a diverse group of mostly predatory fish, including the largest living fish, with skeletons made of cartilage. They have plied the seas since before the dinosaurs lived and play vital ecosystem roles. Sharks'...

Jul 5, 2022

20 times sharks made our jaws drop

Sharks will never stop amazing us — from mysterious and massive whale sharks to intimidating and impressive great whites. Even sharks that don't exist anymore, like the mammoth megalodon, never cease to astonish. We know you love sharks just as much as we do, so here are 20 awesome things...

Jul 5, 2022

Sharks do actually sleep, and sometimes with their eyes wide open

Researchers have finally put a long-standing shark mystery to bed by showing — for the first time — that the oceanic predators do sleep. However, unlike humans and most other animals, these weird fish can doze off with both eyes wide open. In the new study, published online March 9...

Jul 5, 2022

20 of the weirdest sharks

Does the word shark make you conjure up an image of an animatronic Jaws, rolling its dead eyes and gnashing its terrible teeth? While this image of great whites is iconic, there's so much more to sharks than that horror-movie portrayal. The shark world is full of big-eyed beauties, teeny-tiny...

Jul 5, 2022

7 unanswered questions about sharks

Sharks are iconic creatures, but researchers know remarkably little about them. For instance, although scientists know of more than 400 shark species, many of these big fish fare poorly in captivity, making it difficult to observe their mating, navigational, learning and social (or anti-social) behavior. Here are seven mysteries that...

Jul 5, 2022

Great white sharks can't see a difference between humans and prey

Great white sharks can't see the difference between their typical prey and humans swimming or paddling on surfboards, suggesting some shark attacks are cases of mistaken identity, according to a new study. Researchers filmed seals and humans in water and edited the footage so that it matched the vision of...

Jul 5, 2022

Threatened sharks are turning up in pet food, DNA testing shows

Your pet's dinner may contain endangered shark — even if the ingredients on the label don't explicitly include shark, a recent analysis of commercially produced pet foods has found. Pet foods often describe their ocean-sourced ingredients with generic terms such as fish, white fish, white bait or ocean fish, and...

Jul 5, 2022

Biggest sharks in the world

Sharks are a diverse group of fish that have been prowling our oceans for hundreds of millions of years. The group includes several large, food chain-topping predators from the extinct Helicoprion, which had a jaw like a circular saw, to modern-day great white sharks that accelerate through water like a...

Jul 5, 2022

Secret great white shark social club discovered off Mexican coast

Scientists have discovered a secret great white shark social club in the clear blue waters of Guadalupe Island, off the western coast of Mexico. Dozens of sharks descend on the island's coastline to forage every fall and winter, but their Pacific holidays are hardly solitary getaways. According to new research...

Jul 5, 2022

A 1,000-pound great white shark just spotted off coast of New Jersey

A 1,000-pound (453 kilograms) migrating great white shark surfaced off the coast of New Jersey April 28 while seeking rich fishing grounds farther north. Researchers nicknamed the shark Ironbound when he was first caught and tagged in 2019, as he was found near West Ironbound Island near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia....

Jul 5, 2022

Dead baby shark that washed up on UK beach was likely aborted by its mother

A baby shark that recently washed up on a beach in the United Kingdom, was likely aborted by its mother shortly before birth, experts have concluded. The dead shark was found May 13 on Southbourne beach in Bournemouth, southern England, by Georgina and Tim de Glanville, according to local news...

Jul 25, 2022

Stupendous sharks: The largest, smallest and strangest sharks in the world

IntroductionIt's Shark Week: Time to celebrate all that is toothy, finned, and leather-skinned. The Discovery Channel's annual week of shark programming starts July 24 ⁠— you can sink your teeth into all the sharky goodness with our Shark Week streaming guide. In honor of these incredible creatures, we've rounded up...

Jul 27, 2022

Whale sharks are the world’s biggest omnivores, scientists discover

Whale sharks are the biggest shark species in the world, and now scientists have found that the giant sharks are even more prodigious eating machines than previously thought. In addition to gulping down enormous mouthfuls of krill — tiny shrimplike crustaceans — whale sharks also swallow huge helpings of seaweed,...

Jul 29, 2022

'Walking sharks' caught on video, astound scientists

On a remote outcropping at nightfall on the coast of Papua New Guinea on May 3, 2022, scientists encountered something amazing: a walking shark. Using its fins to drag itself, the diminutive tan-and-black-speckled shark shimmied across a tide pool that contained barely enough water to skim its belly, moving like...

Aug 3, 2022

Half-blind Greenland shark possibly spotted in the Caribbean, thousands of miles from its usual home

A strange, ancient-looking shark with blue eyes was unexpectedly discovered in the tropical waters of the Caribbean when it was hooked by Belizean fishers and a biologist on April 22. Researchers recently determined that the unusual fish may have been a Greenland shark or a Greenland shark hybrid in the...