The Frilled Shark AOTM

Howdy everyone, and welcome to September's AOTM! This species of shark is lesser known and is very rare to find living in the wild, so let's dive in!

Classification

The Frilled Shark is apart of the class Cartilaginous fishes. Their order is Hexanchiformes. They are apart of the Chlamydoselachidae family. Lastly, their genus is Chlamydoselachus and their species is Chlamydoselachus anguineus.

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Description

Often described as a strange, prehistoric-looking shark. It has a long cylinder-like body which reaches lengths close to 7 feet. It's fins are placed at the far back of the body. It has an elongate tail fin, which gives the shark it's nickname of an eel shark. The body always tends to be a chocolate brown color. They have six gill openings while most sharks usually have five. The first gill extends all the way to the throat, while the rest are surrounded by frilly margins of skin, which gave the Frilled Shark it's name. A Frilled Shark's snout is short while the lower jaw is long, and the teeth are all similar on the upper and lower jaws.

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Lifespan

Trying to pinpoint how long these sharks can actually live is almost impossible since they're deep benthic creatures. However, it was estimated that in the wild, Frilled Sharks can live as long as 25 years.

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Diet

It is thought that their primary foods consist of small deep-water fish and squid due to their sharp, cupsidate teeth. Since Frilled Sharks do live on the ocean floor, it is possible that they may also eat carrion that float down from the surface.

Their long, slender bodies allow the shark to lunge at their prey like a serpent. Their long and flexible jaws allow them to swallow prey up to half their size.

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Habitat

Frilled Sharks are found on continental shelves and the nearshore areas of large islands. There have been some reports of occasionally spotting one in open waters, but are mostly benthic and are at depths from 100 to 1,300 meters.

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Mating and Reproduction

Reproduction of these sharks are not too well understood. However, they are an ovoviviparous shark which can bear as many as two to twelve live young. Their young are usually 40 cm long. Females are understood to reproduce all year round and have a gestation period of around three years. Mature males are between 1.0-1.2 meters long while mature females are 1.3-1.5 meters long.

After being born, it is suggested that there is little to no parental involvement based off of little information gathered about these sharks. In general, sharks do not care for their young after birth.

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Who are their predators?

Other sharks are likely predators, and humans may accidentally take these sharks as fishing bycatch.

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Do they prefer to live in groups or be alone?

Like most sharks, the Frilled Shark are solitary creatures.

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Fun Facts

Since they are bottom dwellers, Frilled Sharks may be involved with removing decomposing carcasses. Along with other bethic decomposers, the Frilled Shark plays an important role in recycling nutrients.

Frilled Sharks are only one of two living species in the family Chlamydoselachidae.

Scientists believe that even though Frilled Sharks rarely come up to the surface, they're the probably cause for sightings of 'sea serpents' due to their snakelike shape.

They are classified as a near threatened species on the IUCN Red List due to their rare sightings.

Since they live in deep water, based off of other deep water sharks, it is thought that Frilled Sharks may also use their lateral line and sense of touch to navigate the sea bed. Deep water sharks are sensitive to sounds, long-distance vibrations, and electrical pulses given off by animal muscles. Frilled Sharks also have the ability to detect changes in water pressure to tell up from down.

They are a slow-moving, deep water shark and are considered the slowest of shark species.

It is often on rare occasion that fisheries or fishermen may accidentally catch a Frilled Shark and keep it in captivity. In these cases, they would only have an individual shark and not multiple, so it doesn't help scientists too much to study behaviors between sharks. Scientists gather their information on these sharks from dissections of most of these caught sharks and of course the individual captive sharks.

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