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Mega Mouth

Photo of Mega Mouth

The Latin name for Mega Mouth is "Megachasma Pelagios" and this means, "the big mouth from the open sea".

This very rare shark is only known in 22 specimen (two of these specimen are not confirmed). The last seen Mega Mouth was found dead on a beach in Japan the 19th April 2004.

The biggest Mega Mouth that have been found was 17 ft. long and weight 0.7 ton, it was a female caught in Japan in April 1998 (It is claimed that a bigger Mega Mouth was seen near California, USA). Mega Mouth is dark brown or black and it has no pattern on its body. Mega Mouth has a soft jellylike body with small gill slits. Mega Mouth has small eyes that are placed on a big ball-shaped head where the mouth can be up to 3 ft. wide and the mouth contains nearly 1000 small teeth. The mouth of Mega Mouth is silver coloured and it works like a big mirror that reflect the small shining crayfish and by doing that tempting others to come. Nothing is known about the sharks' reproduction.

Mega Mouth is a plankton eater and lives on deep water, from 160 yd. to 1600 yd. and it only comes near the surface at night.

Mega Mouth is like the other 2 plankton eating sharks, ********The Basking Shark and the Whale Shark are very shy animals******, but in contrast to the others the others Mega Mouth is also very slow.