From the graceful glide of a manta to the dead-eyed malice of a great-white, rays and sharks are firmly entrenched in the human psyche... but not all of them fit the common mold. There's a fully-grown shark that can fit in your pocket, an extinct specimen with a buzzsaw for a face and even the biggest freshwater fish in the world. Read on for 12 of the weirdest rays and sharks from Earth's history...
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| Sawfish are actually a kind of ray... (PublicDomainPictures) |
The Pig-Like Angular Roughshark
The angular roughshark doesn't really display the sleek and deadly grace you'd expect from these predators. Saddled with a humped-back and a blunt face, these fish "grunt" when hauled from the net... resulting in their nickname "pig-fish."
Folklore claims that keeping a pig-fish is bad luck, but sadly these deep sea creatures don't seem to survive being thrown back.
The Pocket Sharks
While the best known sharks are big, they come in tiny sizes as well. The aptly-named pocket sharks only reach around 5.5 inches in length, meaning that they could indeed fit in most pockets - but the shark is actually named for the internal pockets it has near the pectoral fins. Researchers haven't figured out what purpose these serve yet, as the fish is extremely rare and only two known specimens have ever reached the hands of scientists.
What we do know about these fish is that they are from the deep sea and have a much blunter snout than the average shark They actually look a bit like a miniature whale when viewed from the side.
The Giant Freshwater Stingray
Living in the rivers of Cambodia, the giant freshwater stingray can reach an absurdly large size. A specimen caught in 2022 clocked in at 661 pounds and 13ft in length (that's around the size of a medium dinghy) making it the largest freshwater fish ever caught.
Though this ray has intimidating proportions, their mouth is about the size of a banana and they feed on mollusks, crustaceans and small fish!
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| The giant freshwater stingray may be the biggest freshwater fish... (Adam Wyman) |
The Sawfish
Did you know that the sawfish is actually a ray? These strange creatures are defined by a saw-toothed rostrum (big snout) that extends from their head.
This "saw" features constantly-growing tooth-like protrusions that make it a dangerous weapon - one that the fish can swing at both predators and prey. Since the biggest sawfish can outgrow a great white shark, these sweeps can do a lot of damage.
The saw also doubles as a sense organ thanks to the Ampullae of Lorenzini it contains. These are the organs that allow sharks and rays to sense electric fields - and the saw is packed with them!
The Buzzsaw-Jawed Whorl Shark
Fossils of the whorl shark boast a particularly alien feature - the lower jaw features a whorl of teeth that coils back beneath itself. As a result, the creature resembles a shark with a circular saw mounted in the lower jaw.
Scientists have debated how this would have worked for a long time, but the current thinking is that the front teeth on the whorl would have hooked prey, the middle teeth were specialized to pierce and cut while the back teeth would have continued to cut and push meat towards the throat!
The Stealthy Wobbegong
It's not just crocodiles that ambush. The wobbegong sharks resemble nothing so much as a pile of coral and seaweed on the shallow ocean floor - apparently the name comes from an aborigine term for a shaggy beard. When hapless prey gets too close, the shark lunges upwards like an organic bear-trap to either swallow prey whole... or to hold it trapped until fatigue, bleeding or suffocation renders it helpless.
The Eagle Shark
Hailing from over 90 million years in the past, the extinct eagle shark resembles a bridge between sharks and rays. Though it seems to have possessed a shark-like body, this fish had pectoral fins that stretched out like wings. In fact, with a 6ft fin-span the creature seems to have been wider than it was long!
Everything we know about this creature comes from a single fossil, which didn't have any teeth. This presents two possibilities - either the teeth were dislodged and remain unfound, or it didn't have any in the first place. If that second option is the case, this animal may have been a filter-feeder behaving in a similar manner to a manta ray.
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| Basking sharks are actually harmless! (Pixabay) |
The Basking Shark
The Cookie-Cutter Shark
Rather than being a jolly little fish that makes fun patterns in dough, the cookie-cutter shark is named after the bite scars it leaves in unfortunate victims. With a large circular mouth, this fish rips circles of skin and tissue from living prey (including great whites) then scoots away to eat the stolen flesh. It also appears to have a disturbingly cheerful smile!
The Frilled Shark
The frilled shark is a true living fossil, thought not to have significantly changed in over 80 million years. There's a reason for that - this reptilian looking fish has hundreds of three-pointed teeth, arranged in rows to form a frill pattern.
Thanks to this maw filled with barbed weaponry, the frilled shark can catch prey (including other sharks) almost as big as it is!
The Chilled-Out Greenland Shark
The Greenland shark drifts languidly through the arctic depths, surviving icy temperatures for centuries. It holds the record for the longest lived vertebrate - scientists who analyzed carbon-14 isotopes from shark eyes say they could live over 500 years.
To keep itself from freezing to death, the shark maintains high levels of urea (most creatures excrete this in urine) and trimethylamine N-oxide (a side product of decaying organic matter) in its blood. This allows the shark to remain active despite sub-zero temperatures, while also rendering their flesh poisonous!
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| The megalodon ate whatever it liked! (janeb13) |
The Megalodon
Did you really think the megalodon wouldn't be on this list?
A (presumably) extinct monster from a much younger Earth, the megalodon would put a great white to shame. Some examples are thought to have reached nearly 25m in length and over 90 tons in weight. Surprisingly, researchers believe they may have been more closely related to mako sharks than great whites.
The megalodon could probably eat whomever it liked, but researchers believe they would have hunted whales and large fish. They would have torn through them with a horrifying 108,514 to 182,201N bite - that's around 5-10 times the power of a great white and 100 times the power of a human.
As for what could kill off the megalodon, the answer may simply be its own hunger. Tectonic activity and cooling ocean waters resulted in smaller and smaller amounts of food being available for the mighty shark to eat - until finally, there wasn't enough to sustain it.
Thanks for reading - for more weird beasts, check out...