Thomas

Whale Sharks

The study of whale sharks has brought me on a fascinating adventure. The whale shark is a very powerful. The adventure taught me a lot more about whale sharks. I chose to do a project about while sharks because I wanted to know everything about whale sharks. Whale sharks are big and beautiful creatures. Whale sharks have fascinated me ever since I was a little boy. I hoped to learn the exact population of the whale sharks, but no one knows. Also, I wanted to learn why whale sharks rarely swim in groups. What I hoped to learn the most was how whale sharks were able to stop swimming and turn vertically. I did not learn all that I expected to learn. Things did turn out the way I expected. I did my research by using books, computers, and going to the library. My mom and reading teacher were helpful because they helped me kind fact cards and web sites for information on my report. The thing that was difficult was looking for information. Scientists currently know very little abut the reproductive details of the what shark. The whale shark is ovoviviparous. Whale sharks do not start to reproduce until the age of twenty-five. Whale sharks give birth to live young. Whale sharks can be found in areas with surface water temperatures from eighteen to thirty degrees Celsius, but they prefer water temperatures between twenty-one and twenty-five degrees Celsius. Whale sharks are located near the equator, around coastlines, and in the open seas. the most popular place to find a whale shark is Ningloo Reef, in Australia. They live in warm water around the world. Whale sharks can be found in every ocean but not the Arctic Ocean because of the cold temperatures. A whale shark's diet uses filter feeding with small fish. When whale sharks are feeding, they sometimes stop swimming to do a "tail-stand". the whale shark does not rely on forward motion but can hang vertically in the water and suck in food. Whale sharks filter feed on microscopic sea plants, called plankton. Whale sharks do not have many predators. Humans kill whale sharks because when whale sharks come up to feed, they sometimes run into ships. The humans think that the whale sharks are attacking them. Whale sharks are harmless to people, and are usually indifferent to divers. Humans are the whale sharks main predator. Whale sharks can be gray, blue, or brown. Many bottom dwelling sharks have bold and disruptive body marking that act as camouflage. Distinctive markings in a pelagic species could be linked to social activities, such as postural displays and recognition processes. Whale sharks can look like big checkerboards. the function of the distinctive pattern of body markings in unknown. the whale shark markings can be a result of it's evolutionary relationship with the bottom dwelling carpet shark. The whale shark's upper surface is a pattern of creamy whit spots between pale, vertical, and horizontal stripes. whale sharks can be many different colors. Scientists have determined that the whale shark is really a shark because of it's skeleton and it's tough, leathery, scaleless skin. these are the classifications of a whale shark: Kingdom: Anamalia Phylum: chordate Sub-Pylum: Vertabrata Class: Chonduchthyes Sub-Class: Elasmobranchii Order: Orectolobiformes Family: Rhincodontidae Genus: Rhimcodon Species: Typus Whale sharks can be different sizes. The length of a whale shark tooth is one eighth of an inch. When whale sharks open their mouths, the mouth can be five feet long. The maximum length of a whale shark is thought to be twenty meters long. The maximum weight of the whale shark is fifteen tons. the length of the whale shark can be up to five hundred fifty-two inches. The male whale shark is bigger than the female whale shark. the length of a baby whale shark is eighteen inches long. The whale shark mouth is usually bigger than a car. Whale sharks can grow to be ten feet wide. Whale sharks have a lot of different sizes. Whale sharks are different from other sharks. Whale sharks have a smaller liver than most sharks. They swim with their huge mouths wide open to gather food, making it hard for their proportionally small eye to see where they are going. The whale shark's stomach turns inside out and spits it's prey through their mouth, ejecting all of the contents. If a whale shark accidentally scooped something up, it would find itself being spit back out through an interesting process called gastric eversion. whale shark skin can be four inches thick. The whale shark's gill rakers trap the food inside. the whale sharks gill slits are very large and modified internally into filtering screens. A streamlined body and a depressed, broad, and flattened head characterize the whale shark. the two lobed caudal fin is semi-lunate in adults. In juveniles, the upper lobe is considerably longer than the lower lobe. the first dorsal is much larger than the second dorsal fin, and set back on the body. the mouth is transverse, very large, and nearly at the tip of the snout. The whale shark has an unique checkerboard color pattern of light spots and stripes o a dark background. Scars o the whale shark heal rapidly. The whale shark's top speed is three miles per hour. The biography that I read and the person that I learned about was Jacques Cousteau. When I was reading, the book said that Cousteau only saw two whale sharks in his whole life. One of the most significant accomplishments in his life was making the first aqualung. the second was that he received the Metal of Freedom. Learning about Cousteau helped me to get more fact cards done, and helped me with my project by having more information for my biography timeline. Some of the jobs and careers that are connected with my topic are oceanographer and deep sea explorer. The training needed for both of these is the ability to swim very well. the education for these jobs is to never kill a whale shark. the most important thing one needs to know is when riding with a whale shark, if it does not want one riding on it, it swims downward. do not swim after it. It cannot be caught. The experience I had doing the research is that now I know that I can find facts in many different places. The hardest part was looking for information. The best part was getting my rough draft written so that I could word process it. Doing this project has been good for me because I have learned a lot more abut whale sharks. If I had more time to do this project, I could get more paragraphs and facts from my cards.   Glossary chordate - any of a phylum [chordate] of animals having at some stage of development a notochard, gill slits, and a dorsal tubular nerve cord. eversion - an everting or being everted. gastric - of or pertaining to the stomach. genus - a taxonomic category ranking below a family and above a species. microscopic - to small to be seen by the unaided eye. ovoviviparous - designating various animals, as some reptiles, fishes, and snails, which produce eggs with enclosing membranes. pelagic - of or pertaining to or living in oceans or seas. phylum - any of the broad, principal divisions of the animal kingdom. transverse - situated or lying across. vertabrata - any of a large subphylum [vertabrata] of chordate animals.   Bibliography Col, Jeananda. All About Sharks. [Online] Available http://www.enchantedlearning.com. Keller, Elizabeth. Creature World. [Online] Available http://www.extremescience.com. Unknown Author. Readers Digest. (1998). Sharks. Pleasontville, N. Y. Unknown Author. Whale Sharks. [Online] Available http://www.biggestfish.com. Unknown Author. Whale Sharks. [Online] Available http://www.thebigzoo.com. .

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