Transcript:

Today on Animal Fact Files we’re discussing greenland sharks. Don’t forget to chomp that sub button, and thank you to dpfvok for today’s request. Greenlands sharks are sleeper sharks and have a lot of common names including, ground sharks, grey sharks, and gurry sharks, but Greenland shark is suitable because they are found in the arctic and northern atlantic oceans which is also where Greenland is located. Hey, a common name that makes sense… unlike some other animals we’ve previously discussed... Greenland sharks generally stay pretty far north, though they have been found as far south as France. They also prefer marine environments, but they are able to enter brackish water.

Now, we have a problem with how sharks are cast in a negative light, and Greenland sharks are no exception. For some reason Greenland sharks are given a bad name, probably just because they’re sharks, but let’s make this clear: there is not a single scientific documentation of a Greenland shark harming a human. Even one of my favorite games got this wrong. Sharks are absolutely apex predators, but they aren’t so bad, either.

For the most part, Greenland sharks wouldn’t be seen anyway because of the depths at which they live. Generally, Greenland sharks are found between 650 and 2,000 feet (200-610m) below the ocean’s surface, but they have been observed more than a mile (1.6km) down. When they do come up to the surface, it’s almost always due to food availability. Whaling is still allowed in some of the areas Greenland sharks are found and these operations can attract these sharks to the surface. When they aren’t scavenging whale carcasses, Greenland sharks typically eat deep sea fish such as cod and halibut. They’ve also been found with seal, sea bird, horse, reindeer, and even polar bear remains in their stomachs, but these are generally thought to be from scavenged carcasses. Again, media wants to sensationalize this, but Greenland sharks are slow moving sharks. They are likely not active predators and use ambush to catch these fast moving prey items or simply reap the benefits of another animal’s demise. I know it sounds cool to say polar bear eating death machine, but let’s be reasonable.

Greenland sharks themselves don’t really have any predators besides humans, and this is likely due to their size. They can reach more than twenty feet (6m) in length, meaning they rival even the great whites. When they are taken by humans, their meat has to be dried before it can be consumed because their meat is toxic to humans when it’s fresh. Mm. Shark poisoning.

Greenland sharks also almost always blind, at least in one eye. Most Greenland sharks have a parasitic copepod attach to their cornea, though the sharks don’t seem to mind - probably because they’re sharks and can rely on senses other than sight in order to catch a meal. Actually, this has no scientific backing, but supposedly the copepods bioluminesce which could potentially attract prey in the dark depths of the ocean. Again, not scientifically proven, but the idea of a single glowing eyed shark is really freaking cool. Plus, seeing as how they’re believed to live for hundreds of years, the likelihood of them catching one of these parasites is pretty high. Yeah, the most recent research in Greenland shark longevity has the best guess for their age being more than two hundred, which means there are likely Greenland sharks alive today who were born before Charles Darwin. This also means they take a long time to reach reproductive maturity, and they might have to outlive the longest living humans before they can even think about having babies. We don’t know much about how Greenland sharks reproduce, but females bear scars indicating males likely bite them while mating. We can also surmise that they develop in eggs within the mother’s body until they hatch and are born live.

For more facts on Greenland sharks, check out the links in the description. Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today, and thank you for watching Animal Fact Files.