Hammerhead Shark

The name hammerhead is given to the shark because of its following structure:

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These sharks belong to the community of Sphyrnidae. As we can see in the above picture, the peculiar and distinctive structure of its head, i.e., flattened and laterally extended into a "hammer" shape called a cephalofoil.

Most hammerhead shark species are found in the genus Sphyrna. Besides this, these species have their own scientific classification, distribution areas or habitat, diet, cultural significance, along with a good relationship with humans. 

We will discuss all of these, starting with the hammerhead shark anatomy, followed by taxonomy, description, different kinds of hammerhead sharks, and hammerhead shark facts as well.

Hammerhead Etymology

The word hammer-head, the 1560s, "head of a hammer," formed from the hammer (noun) + head (noun). From 1796 (American English) regarding a sort of shark, purported for its expansive, transverse head. 

The creature is alluded to as a hammer-headed shark from 1752 and a balance-fish from 1745. The more established name for it was balance-fish; there was a full example and in front of another under that name in the Royal Society Museum by 1681.

Hammerhead Shark Definition

Hammerhead shark a shark of the variety Sphyrna, particularly S. zygaena, having the head extended horizontally to take after a twofold-headed hammer, in some cases hazardous to swimmers.

Hammerhead Classification

Hammerhead Shark Prey

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The significance of a hammer-like shape of the head is that hammerhead sharks can trace for prey more effectively.

About Hammerhead Shark

The known hammerhead shark size range from 0.9 to 6.0 m (2 ft 11 inches to 19 ft 8 inches) long and weigh from 3 to 580 kg (6.6 to 1,278.7 lb).

Also, they are typically light grey and have a greenish tin. 

Hammerhead shark bellies are white, which permits them to mix the background when seen from underneath and sneak up on their prey. In addition, their heads have lateral projections that give these species a hammer-like shape. 

While generally speaking comparative, this shape varies to some degree between species; e.g., a distinct T-shape in the great hammerhead, an adjusted head with a focal indent in the scalloped hammerhead, and an unnotched adjusted head in the smooth hammerhead. 

Hammerheads have excessively little mouths contrasted with other shark species. They are additionally known to form schools during the day, once in a while in groups of more than 100. 

In the evening, as different sharks, they become solitary hunters. National Geographic clarifies that hammerheads can be found in warm, tropical waters, yet throughout the mid-year, they partake in a mass relocation to look for cooler waters.

Different Kinds of Hammerhead Sharks

Below is the table describing the different kinds of hammerhead sharks along with their common name, IUCN Red List status, and their population trends:

Hammerhead Shark Anatomy

Hammerhead shark, (family Sphyrnidae), any of 10 shark species having a place with the genera Sphyrna (9 species) and Eusphyrna (1 species), which are described by a levelled hammer or digging tool molded head, or cephalofoil. 

Hammerhead sharks, or sphyrnids, are maybe the most unmistakable and special, everything being equal. 

A cartilaginous hammerhead fish changes in size; the little scalloped bonnethead (S. crown) gauges just 90 cm (35 inches) in length, though the incredible hammerhead (S. mokarran) develops to over 6.1 meters (20 feet) long. 

Even though they are viewed as the most lately developed gatherings of sharks, sphyrnids are known to go back in the fossil record to at any rate the early Miocene Age (around 23 million to 5.3 million years prior). A few specialists accept that this gathering arose as ahead of schedule as the Eocene Age (about 56 million to 33.9 million years prior).

Hammerhead Shark Taxonomy

Sarks don't have mineralized bones and once in a while fossilize, just their teeth are ordinarily found as fossils. The hammerheads appear to be firmly identified with the carcharhinid sharks that advanced during the mid-Tertiary time frame. As indicated by DNA examines, the predecessor of the hammerheads most likely lived in the Miocene age around 20 million years ago.

Utilizing mitochondrial DNA, a phylogenetic tree of the hammerhead sharks showed the winghead shark as its most basal part. As the winghead shark has proportionately the biggest "hammer" of the hammerhead sharks, this proposes that the primary hereditary hammerhead sharks additionally had enormous mallets. Fossils show that hammerheads may have developed before during the Paleocene.

Hammerhead Evolution

The hammer-like shape of the head may have evolved at least to some degree to upgrade the animal's vision. The situating of the eyes, mounted on the sides of the shark's unmistakable mallet head, permits 360° of vision in the upward plane, which means the creatures can see above and beneath them consistently.

Additionally, they have an expanded binocular vision and profundity of the visual field because of the cephalofoil. The shape of the head was recently thought to help the shark discover food, supporting close by other people mobility, and permitting sharp turning development without losing strength. 

The strange design of its vertebrae, however, has been discovered to be instrumental in making the turns accurately, more regularly than the state of its head, however, it would likewise move and give lift.

Based on what is thought about the winghead shark, the shape of the hammerhead obviously has to do with an advanced tangible capacity. Like all sharks, hammerheads have electroreceptors tangible pores called ampullae of Lorenzini. The pores on the shark's head lead to tactile cylinders, which distinguish electric fields produced by other living animals. By dispersing the receptors over a more extensive region, similar to a bigger radio antenna, hammerheads can clear for prey all the more viably.

Hammerhead Reproduction

Reproduction happens just once every year for hammerhead sharks and generally happens with the male shark gnawing the female shark savagely until she consents to mate with him.

The hammerhead sharks display a viviparous method of propagation with females giving birth to a live young. 

Like different sharks, fertilization is inward, with the male moving sperm to the female through one of two intromittent organs called claspers.

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The creating incipient organisms are from the start supported by a yolk sac. At the point when the inventory of yolk is depleted, the drained yolk sac changes into a construction undifferentiated from a mammalian placenta (called a "yolk sac placenta" or "pseudoplacenta"), through which the mother conveys food until birth. 

When the child sharks are conceived, they are not dealt with by the guardians in any capacity. Generally, a litter comprises 12 to 15 pups, with the exception of the incredible hammerhead, which brings forth litters of 20 to 40 little males. These child sharks cluster together and swim toward hotter water until they are mature enough and enormous enough to make due on their own.

Do You Know?

In 2007, the bonnethead shark was discovered to be equipped for abiogenetic reproduction through automictic parthenogenesis, in which a female's ovum wires with a polar body to frame a zygote without the requirement for a male. This was the main shark known.

Hammerhead Shark Diet

Hammerhead sharks eat a huge scope of prey like fish (counting different sharks), squid, octopus, and scavengers. Stingrays are a specific top choice. These sharks are frequently discovered swimming along the lower part of the sea, following their prey. Their one-of-a-kind heads are utilized as a weapon when chasing down prey. 

The hammerhead shark thinks carefully to nail down stingrays and eats the prey when the prey is powerless and in shock.

The incredible hammerhead, having a tendency to be bigger and more forceful than most hammerheads, once in a while takes part in savagery, eating other hammerhead sharks, incorporating its own young.

Notwithstanding the normal creature prey, bonnetheads have been found to benefit from seagrass, which sometimes makes up however much a large portion of their stomach substance. They may swallow it accidentally, yet they can mostly process it. This is the lone known instance of possibly omnivorous types of shark.

Hammerhead Shark Distribution

Hammerhead sharks are generally dispersed in tropical and calm marine waters close to the coasts or more the mainland racks. They may move occasionally, moving equatorward throughout the colder time of year and poleward throughout the late spring. 

In years with warm El Niño conditions, hammerhead sharks may go a huge number of kilometers farther than typical. A few animal groups, like the scalloped hammerhead (S. lewini) and smooth hammerhead (S. zygaena), structure enormous schools that might be isolated by sex or age.

Hammerhead Shark Lifespan

Hammerhead sharks are viviparous: they hold treated eggs inside the body and bring forth live young from 2 to 42. More modest species produce only a couple youthful, while the extraordinary hammerhead will bring forth a few dozen. 

For the most part, the birth happens throughout the spring and summer months, and females normally conceive offspring in shallow, secured seaside waters. The young lives around there until they arrive at bigger sizes and can securely wander into more profound seaward waters.

Shark Hammerhead Shape Significance

The special shape of sphyrnid cephalofoils seems to fill a few needs. 

• In the first place, the straightened and extended head goes about as a hydrodynamic bow plane that permits the shark to raise and turn its head rapidly and forcefully. This element gives the shark upgraded mobility to eat up its prey. 

• Secondly, the nostril is abundantly extended contrasted and different gatherings of sharks and may give hammerhead sharks a quicker capacity to find prey and follow aromas to their sources. 

• Thirdly, the all-encompassing dispersing of the eyes may give a more extensive field of view; it might likewise augment the parallel field of view and increment foremost profundity discernment. 

• Lastly, the wide underside of the head - with its extended surface region - houses more electroreceptive organs, which are significant for recognizing the electrical motivations of prey. These organs may even identify the electrical motivations of prey covered in silt. In conclusion, numerous bigger hammerhead species chase stingrays and other benthic (that is, base dwelling) fish; they have been noticed utilizing the wide edges of their heads to slam and stick prey to the substrate prior to gnawing them.

Hammerhead Shark Relationship with Humans

As indicated by the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), people have been subjects of 17 reported, unjustifiable attacks by hammerhead sharks inside the sort Sphyrna since the 1580 Promotion. No human fatalities have been recorded. 

The great and the scalloped hammerheads are recorded on the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) 2008 Red List as jeopardized, while the smalleye hammerhead is recorded as powerless. The status given to these sharks is because of overfishing and interest in their blades, a costly delicacy. 

Among others, researchers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science yearly gathering in Boston communicated their concern about the plight of the scalloped hammerhead.  For the most part, a young swim in shallow waters along shores everywhere in the world to keep away from hunters.

Hammerhead Shark Facts

• In 2010, geneticists at the College of Colorado, Boulder looked at DNA tests from eight hammerhead species trying to delineate the family's transformative history. The sub-atomic proof proposed that the hammerheads began to differentiate around 20 million years prior. The fossil record reveals to us sharks have existed for in any event 420 million years.

• These sharks' expansive, level, hammer-molded heads are called cephalofoils, and no other animal on the planet has a head very like it. Hammerheads, similar to any remaining sharks, have sensory organs that can identify the electric fields of prey in the water.

• Specialists have distinguished 10 living shark species in the hammerhead family (in spite of the fact that it's conceivable that significantly more exist). Nine have a place with the class Sphyrna (Greek for "hammer"), while the other—a crackpot called the winghead shark—is the sole individual of its own sort, Eusphyra.

Hammerhead Shark Cultural Significance

Among Torres Strait Islanders, the hammerhead shark, known as the beizam, is a typical family symbol and regularly addressed in social curios, for example, the intricate crowns worn for stately moves, known as dhari or dari. They are related to law and order.

Eminent craftsman Ken Thaiday Snr is known for his portrayals of beizam in his sculptural dari and different works.