Swimming With Sharks Trivia Quiz

Answer: Great white

The great white fits most people's idea of a shark. They can grow up to six metres long and live in cool, tropical, sub-tropical and warm temperate seas, where they feed on dolphins, seals, large fish and sea lions.

Answer: Hammerhead

Named for the unusual shape of their heads, there are eight known species of hammerhead: the scalloped bonnethead, the smooth hammerhead, the Carolina hammerhead, the smalleye hammerhead, the scalloped hammerhead, the bonnethead, the scoophead and the great hammerhead.

Answer: False

Have a feel of your ears. They're soft and bendy. This is because they're made of cartilage, the same soft and bendy material that shark skeletons are made from.

Answer: Common saw shark

Saw sharks are very unusual. Above their small mouths, they have a long, pointed appendage, used for digging in the sand to uncover shrimp or shellfish. The edges of this appendage are covered in sharp, spiny teeth.

Answer: males have pointed rods called claspers on their pelvic fins

On the underside of the tail are two pelvic fins. Between these fins, male sharks have a pair of pointed rods called claspers. These are used to pass sperm into the females during breeding. Some sharks, like the Port Jackson, lay eggs while others, like the great white, give birth to their young alive.

Answer: 400

There are more than four hundred known species of sharks, ranging in size from the ten-centimetre-long spined pygmy to the fifteen-metre-long whale shark.

Answer: Mega-mouth

With less than sixty known specimens, the mega-mouth is the world's rarest species of shark. They live in warm oceans at depths of up to twenty-five metres and feed on jellyfish and plankton.

Answer: they're warm-blooded

Most fish are cold-blooded which means they can't control their own body temperature. Many of the large mackerel sharks, including the short-finned mako and the great white are warm-blooded. This allows them to move quickly but it does have some disadvantages.

They need to hunt more often than less active sharks and their bodies need more oxygen, meaning they have to be on the move all the time.

Answer: True

Sharks first appeared around four hundred million years ago. The first plants did not start appearing on land until the beginning of the Devonian Period, around three-hundred and ninety million years ago.

Answer: Denticles

Shark skin is covered in tiny, tooth-like structures called denticles.