Great White Shark Facts
The Great White shark has gone from being labelled a marauding monster of the sea to being a misunderstood majestic fish on the edge of extinction.
As an introduction as to what makes this apex predator the shark that still turns the most heads - both in and out of the water - here's 10 fascinating facts about the carcaradon carcharias.
Despite the Great White shark in Jaws being 25 feet in length, adult great white sharks grow to a maximum size of approximately 20 feet in length.
Photo of Squirrel the Great White shark by Euan Rannachan
In a marine life survey conducted in 2018 it was estimated that there are only 3,500 individual Great Whites left in our oceans.
The Great White is the largest predatory fish in the ocean, it has 300 teeth, but does not chew its food. They rip their prey into mouth-sized pieces, so this shark really will swallow you whole. It has five rows of serrated teeth.
When they aren't bothering various members of the Brody family, Great White sharks live for an estimated 30 - 70 years. Female Great White sharks mature between 13-16 feet in length at 12-14 years of age whereas males mature between 11.5-14.5 feet in length at 9-10 years of age. The female of the species is also much larger than the male, which means in filmic terms, the 35 feet long Great White in Jaws 3D made sense.
Greg Nicotero’s Bruce shark (based on the original movie mould) designed to be as accurate as possible.
People don't even know how old sharks are? States Chief Brody in Jaws, but its estimated sharks have been here for 400 million years, that makes them even older than dinosaurs. Early fossil records show that Great White sharks have been swimming in Earth’s oceans for around 16 million years.
Fast fish! Clocking in at speeds up to 35 mph, Great White sharks are some of the fastest predators in the oceans.
Would you rather be bitten by a Great White or a lion? A Great White shark has a bite force of 4,000 psi, that is 10 times the bite force of a lion.
A Great White can consume a whole seal and won’t need to eat for another three months, obviously the shark in Jaws was a little greedy.
Remember how we all scoffed at the shark from Jaws the Revenge travelling from Amity to the Bahamas? Great whites migrate long distances. Some make journeys from the Hawaiian Islands to California, and one shark that swam from South Africa to Australia made the longest recorded migration of any fish.
Though an apex predator, Great White sharks are often attacked and eaten by Killer Whales. They can also turn on each other, but its most fearsome predator is still man.
Ahead of the release of Jaws in the summer of 1975, the Universal Studios marketing department created some now iconic shark facts posters. Here's what was on those posters: Shark Facts
Words Dean Newman
Video by Kristian Parton
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