Pinocchio Shark

Dear Moonstruck,

It has been a long time since the last time we saw each other. I apologize for my absence but I was busy looking and visiting some new dark corners of the earth, and guess what! I found a ton of new creepy creatures that I will share with you further on.  

Today I will take you deep into the ocean to one of my favorite dark corners of nature. Get your equipment, take a big breath and enter in the Moonstruck´s submarine. Lets start this creepy journey into the deep.

Pause it here... If you get scared easily I strongly recommend you to stop reading, if not I will introduce you to our new and eccentric creepy creature.

We start at the beach, we pass the continental slope, we keep going deeper until we reach the abyssal plain. Everything is dark and cold, we keep exploring but we can't see anything. Wait, we see a shade approaching the submarine, I see a big snout! I see a fish! I see a Goblin Shark!

Its extremely weird aspect, long snout and sharp teeth make the Goblin shark one of the main characters in the Darkest Corner of Nature.

What is this creature? Well it is a shark, a cartilaginous carnivorous fish. His scientific name is Mitsukurina owstoni  and he belongs to the Mitsukurinidae family,. SAY WHAT? such a hard name to pronounce! His name resembles an exotic Japanese dish, may be because the goblin shark was discovered by Japanese people. 

Enough of scientific names! Lets talk about food! Can you guess what does our Goblin shark eat? Well, not. he does not normally eat humans. Even though they measure from 3-4 m long, these guys normally feast on high quality seafood such as fish, lobsters, octopuses and squids.

You should be grateful from this random encounter since you are in front of what we may call a living fossil. Let me explain, the cousins and other close relatives of this shark have been roaming the oceans for about 125 million years. What an old guy! 

What about his look, it is way more different than any other shark species. Lets explain some of his characteristic physical traits:

First of all, what about that giant nose. This is called a snout and is one of his main physical traits. Despite being an awkward and ugly organ, it has a very particular purpose. It is fully covered by small sensitive organs called ampullae of Lorenzini. These ampullae allow the shark to detect the electrical field in the water, mainly to detect other fish and eat them.

The jaws of this shark are like a little toy.  never get to close! His jaws are protusible, meaning that he can unfold his scary sharply teeth from its snout anytime he wants. So when the prey is out of reach, the shark can easily extend an elastic tissue out of his mouth to grab the unlucky prey.

Here we can see the Goblin Shark´s favorite toy: His jaws  (The shark above with its jaws inside, the one below extending them out).

Apart from that cool Pinocchio nose, the Goblin shark holds a flabby body and really small fins. Making its outfit even more eccentric.

One last curious thing, since these weird looking creatures dislike the sun, they have earned the cool creepy nickname of "Vampire shark". Be careful my dear moonstruck, you don´t want this ocean vampire eating from your little human flesh.

The shark fin trade is one of the main reasons for the declining in shark´s populations.

Sharks have changed very little since they populated the earth, this is due to their greatly aerodynamic shape, which confers them all the thinks they need in the oceans. However these awesome biological machines should be taken care of since the fin trade and ilegal hunting has had a negative effect on the shark populations worldwide. We need to take care of our creepy creatures, one example would be avoiding shark meet and support shark conservation projects.

Until next time my dear Moonstruck.