Whale sharks live for a long time – from 70 to 90 years. Whale sharks are egg-living, that is, during childbirth, babies hatch from eggs. The number of young can reach up to three hundred. Kids have a size of 40-60 centimeters. After birth, sharks can not eat anything for 2 weeks.
Sexual maturity in whale sharks comes in 30 years. There is an opinion that females are fewer in number than males. But this information is not verified. The sizes of females are larger than males, and puberty also comes earlier.
Although these fish have a large mouth, large animals do not interest them. The width of the mouth of a whale shark reaches 1.5 meters. There are 300-350 tiny teeth in the mouth. On each side of the body there are 5 gill slits. These cracks are very important during nutrition. The whale shark sucks in the huge mouth of water along with krill, plankton, small fishes and crab larvae. When the shark closes the mouth, the teeth do not allow the animals to slip out.
Water leaves the mouth through the gill slits. Gills have special shutters, in the form of a sieve. Through such a sieve comes everything that has a size of more than 2 meters. This animal is swallowed by a shark. The smallest living creatures choke the dampers, in order to clean them, the fish “coughs”. During the cough, all the small items fly out of the mouth and thus the flaps are cleaned.
