All About The Whale Shark's Diet And Anatomy

You can actually think the best description to suit a whale shark is this: A mouthful of teeth and a stomach that is consistently starving. Even though that seems morbidly acceptable it has nothing to do with the truth. In truth, whale sharks are totally different from other shark species when considering diet. See more Whale Shark Tour here.

Whale Sharks are typically known as filter-feeders. They eat mostly krill, plankton, squid, small fishes, red crab larvae and small nektonic vertebrates. A whale shark has a very unique oral anatomy which enables it to gulp in water, filter for food, and then expulse the water thru its gills.

Whale Shark Anatomy

As opposed to what a lot of people belief, whale sharks do not have big sharp teeth, just like other sharks do. The fact is that, the size of their teeth is considerably smaller given that their teeth serve no real purpose in feeding. Put another way, whale sharks will not chew their food. Truly being filter-feeders, whale sharks have a distinctive raking mechanism attached to the insides of their gills that work to filter food from the water they drink in. Filter-feeding requires a rather interesting, if somewhat odd, logic.

Filter-feeding

Instead of preying on fishes, a whale shark sucks in mouthfuls of water packed with planktons, macro-algae, and also tiny fishes. Next, it closes its oral cavity to trap the water inside, which is funneled through the gill flaps, where water is gotten rid of. The majority of the food particles are trapped against the dermal denticles lining the whale shark's pharynx and gill plates. The gills have very fine sieve-like contraptions which are employed to sifter planktons. The filters, only 2 to 3 millimeters in diameter, eliminate anything besides water and small sized food particles from escaping.

Any organic material which is caught between the gill filters is swallowed in after. To a human point of view, the concept of filter-feeding would appear quite a problem. You can definitely find it difficult to understand utilizing your oral cavity like a sponge filter plus swallowing the dirt that builds up inside of the filter. Although whale sharks are usually well experienced at filter-feeding, the difficulty of it is not lost to them. Whale sharks usually are documented "coughing," unable to swallow most of the food particles stuck in the gill filters. Soon enough, the excess particles there increase and block up the filters, making it difficult to eat with no need of coughing and, potentially, choking.

Whale sharks are quite active feeders. When compared to various other species of sharks, or fishes for instance, whale sharks hardly ever give up eating. As filter-feeding also does not demand them to chase for food, whale sharks can merely gulp in water even when they are resting in fixed position.

Other Filter-feeder Sharks

Amidst all species of sharks, two others are filter-feeders: the megamouth shark as well as the basking shark. The basking shark doesn't filter-feed the way whale sharks do. In place of gulping as well as expelling water via their gills, basking sharks simply "basks," as a result pushing water to flow through their gills. The food particles are then amassed and ingested.

The fact is, whale sharks are extremely distinctive from what you first assumed them to be. They are filter-feeders and have no use for teeth, far less for a mouthful of razor-sharp, pointy teeth.