Differences In The Sharks Life Cycle

A shark is a fish, however, it is a distinctly different kind of fish. The many species differ in many ways. A sharks life cycle can be shorter or longer, depending on what type of shark it is.

Fish have bones supporting their bodies. Sharks have cartilage which is much softer and does not offer as much support. The shark cannot live out of water for more than a few minutes. This is a major difference between sharks and fish.

Although the shark is considered to be unintelligent, it has managed to exist for 300 million years. The sharks life cycle is dependent on the type. One species will live for 20 to 30 years on average.

The Piked Dogfish is an extreme exception. It lives from between 70 and 100 years. Sharks have three ways of giving birth. It varies from species to species. Some lay eggs and swim away as other fish do. Some will lay their eggs and carry them until they hatch. Still others carry them within their bodies and nourish them through an umbilical cord, just as warm blooded mammals do.

Gestation periods vary from 9 months to 22 months. The mother gives birth to one, or up to an astonishing 100 pups at a time. One feature that humans might envy is that they grow additional teeth throughout the life span. As the old teeth wear out, new ones continue to replace them for however many years the shark lives.

The name for a young shark is the pup. One of the most widely studied of these creatures is the lemon shark. It resides in relatively shallow water and is territorial, thus available to be analyzed over a lifetime. It is found to mature after 13 to 15 years of life.

The pup swims only in a limited size territory for the first three years of its life. As the pup ages and grows, he expands his swimming and hunting for food territory. The lemon sharks inhabit the murky waters off Bimini.

When sexual maturity is attained (13 years for the male and 14 to 16 for the female), they will be living and hunting in about a sixteen mile area. At that age they are seven feet long. The sharks life cycle encompasses about 25 years altogether.

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