𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕝𝕖 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕜

❝𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅

𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒔.

𝑯𝒆 𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒚𝒆𝒕 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅

𝒔𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒐𝒏 𝒉𝒊𝒎𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇.❞

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Tᴀʙʟᴇ ᴏғ Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ

1. Intro

2. Brief data

3. Characteristics

4. Whale or shark?

5. Sighting sites

6. Why do I like it?

7. Outro

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𝕀𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕠

Hello, beautiful people!

Alex here with a new post~

This is different from what I'm used to write. This time, I'll bring you a post about my favorite marine animal: the whale shark!

Have you ever heard about it? Would you like to know what makes it so special?

Then let's go!

𝔹𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕗 𝕕𝕒𝕥𝕒

Common name: Whale shark

Scientific name: Rhincodon typus

Kingdom: Animalia

Type: Fish

Phylum: Chordata

Family: Rhincodontidae

Diet: Carnivore

IUCN Red List Status: Endangered

ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕔𝕤

First of all, this lovely species is the biggest fish in the sea: the highest length ed is 18.8m (62ft)!

In average, whale sharks grow to 5.5m to 10m (18ft to 32.8ft). These gigantic animals can weight around 20.6 tons. To put this in context, this information is very similar to the sizes of a bus.

Whale sharks' heads are flattened and have a blunt snout above its mouth. Its back and sides are gray to brown. Each of them have a unique pattern of spots, allowing individual sharks to be identified correctly.

They might not be the most sociable species out there: they are pretty solitaire. However, they don't mind sharing feeding grounds with other whale sharks.

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕝𝕖 𝕠𝕣 𝕤𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕜?

This is something people tend to confuse about, so I'm going to make it as clear as posible: this is a shark, not a whale. Of course, whale sharks share a lot in common with a regular whale.

For example, they are huge as them and eat gigantic quantities of food, like a normal whale. Luckily for us, they are completely harmless to humans!

Their diet is based on plankton. Whale sharks are filter feeders: they open their big mouths and filters everything on the ocean's surface.

𝕊𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤

Whale sharks populate warm waters. In other words, tropical seas. Of course, everything depends on the time of the year. As with many other species, this is an important factor to their distribution.

There are many tourist companies that offer you fun days with whale sharks assuring that their actions won't do any harm to the creature. However, this kind of activities are discouraged by scientists to not disturb the animals.

𝕎𝕙𝕪 𝕕𝕠 𝕀 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕚𝕥?

I first found out about the shale shark when I was doing a language homework last year. We had to find an article of an interesting topic for us to... I can't what we were supposed to do :joy: :sweat_smile: .

After scrolling through boring writings, I found a whale shark article. I've always been interested in animals, so I decided to read it. It was pretty long, but I immediately fell in love with that creature. It has been my favorite sea animal ever since.

One if my favorite things about it is how friendly and nice they can be to humans. As I said before, it's discouraged by scientists, but when divers swim near them, whale sharks do no harm to them.

The younger ones can even play with them! And also, just look at it. Isn't it lovely? One of my biggest dreams is to see one in real life, investigate them and help them to not be endagered.

𝕆𝕦𝕥𝕣𝕠

That's all I have for y'all! What do you think about this beautiful species? Did you already know about them? Would you like to see one in real life like me?

Thanks for reading! See ya!

—Alex

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Sources

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

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