25 Weird Sharks You Never Heard Of

Posted by , Updated on March 21, 2024

Hi, I’m Adam from Epic Wildlife, Did you know that there are over 440 species of sharks? And that’s just the ones we’ve discovered. Here are 25 weird sharks that your average person hasn’t heard.

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25

Japanese Wobbegong (Orectolobus japonicas)

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This ray-like species of shark has distinctive flaps of skin, called barbels, which hang from its mouth that enable it to taste and feel. Found mostly around the Philippines, the construction and coloring of this shark makes it a very efficient predator.

24

The Megamouth Shark

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Since it’s discovery in 1976 there have been very few sightings of this extremely rare deep sea shark. It gets its name from its giant mouth which is home to 50 rows of tiny hooked teeth.

23

The Australian Ghost Shark

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Also known as the Elephant Shark this shark is only about 4 feet long. This slow growing shark is easy to recognize because of its trunk like snout.

22

The Goblin Shark

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This extremely rare shark is believed to grow up to 13 feet in length. It’s known for its protruding mouth in which its jaws can extend out like a hand to grab prey.

21

The Theresher Shark

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This fast swimmer has a unique tail in which it uses to heard together smaller fish like cattle making them easy prey. Its tail alone can weigh over 700 pounds making up 33% of its body weight.

20

The Dwarf Lantern Shark

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This is the world’s smallest known shark and is smaller than your average human hand. It is bioluminescent which means it has tiny glowing spots that helps it attract smaller prey.

19

The Whale Shark

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This beautiful shark is the largest known fish in the sea with a maximum length of 65 feet and weight of 75,000 pounds. Despite their size, these giant sharks only feed on plankton and tiny fish.

18

The Basking Shark

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This funny looking shark happens to be the second largest fish in the world growing up to 33 feet long. Slow moving, it can often be found at the waters surface during the day as if was “basking” in the sun.

17

The Horn Shark

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This small species of shark has a viper like face and for good reason, its large spines are venomous. Its an akward swimmer and prefers to use its strong fins to crawl around the ocean floor.

16

The Bahamas Sawshark

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It’s easy to see where this bizarre looking fish gets it’s name from. The shark uses it’s saw-like snout to dig up sand to find food and can only be found in waters near the Bahamas.

15

The Frilled Shark

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A unique deep sea dweller it’s sometimes refered to as the lizard shark or scaffold shark. It has thousands of pointy hooked teeth and a slender snake-like body.

14

Prickly Dogfish

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This hump backed shark can be found in deep ocean waters between Australia and New Zealand. It gets it’s name from it’s prickly rough skin that can be compared to the feeling of sandpaper.

13

Indonesian speckled carpetshark

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This unique species of shark has very distinguishable patterns all over its body, which resemble a leopard. Since it hides during most of the day, and is only active during the night, not a lot is known about this carpet shark species to humans.

12

Sharpnose sevengill shark

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This odd-looking species of shark has a very slender, greyish-brown body that will grow to be about 4 feet in length. What sets it apart in appearance from other sharks is its large, fluorescent eyes in combination with its slender snout.

11

Birdbeak dogfish

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This small species of shark has an usually long and sharp nose, from which it gets its name. With a short life-span of up to only 25 years and a long estimated gestation period, this commonly hunted shark faces a high risk in endangerment.

10

Angular roughshark

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This rare and mysterious species of shark forms a very bizarre appearance with its unusually large fins and rough, teeth-like scales, called denticles, covering its body. Averaging about two feet in length, this species of shark is not typically targeted by fisheries, but is still classified as a vulnerable species because it is often caught as bycatch.

9

Pyjama shark

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This sluggish, nocturnal species of shark uniquely has seven dark stripes that cover the length of its pale, grayish body. These sharks breed oviparously, by dropping two purse-like egg sacs once a year, which will attach to marine vegetation to hatch 5 to 6 months later.

8

Angel Shark

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This strange species of shark actually looks more like an oversized ray than a shark. With its large fins and flat body, it is able to easily camouflage itself on the seafloor, making it a great ambush predator.

7

Daggernose Shark

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This little-known species averages about three feet in length. What sets it apart from other shark species is its unique combination of a drastically long snout and paddle-like fins.

6

Zebra Shark

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This medium-sized species of shark is a long and flat seafloor dweller that swims by moving its tail from side to side, like an eel. Though its name may be misleading at times, since the shark eventually loses its stripes, an adult zebra shark is easily identifiable by the unique spots covering its back.

5

Dumb Gulper Shark

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This deepwater species of shark has an an unusually wide mouth and extremely large, colored eyes on its skinny head. So little is known about this species that it is questionable whether or not it is even a distinct species from the Little Gulper Shark.

4

Speartooth Shark

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This rare and mysterious species of shark gets its name from the intense, spear-like teeth on its upper jaw. There is no record of this type of shark being caught at a fully grown age, or even at sexually maturity, but much about it is drawn from other very closely related species.

3

Caribbean Roughshark

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This frightening species of shark has unusually large fins on a small body. Though it remains near the seafloor in the depths of the ocean and has very rarely even been seen by humans, its spear-like teeth on its upper jaw in combination with the blade-like teeth on its lower jaw is still chilling.

2

The Cookie Cutter Shark

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Also known as the cigar shark an adult specimen weighs about 10 pounds and grows up to 2 feet long. It gets its name from the cookie cutter marks it leaves on larger prey.

1

The Whorl Shark

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This prehistoric species of shark is fascinatingly unique because of its jaw structure. Fossils found of this species have revealed that the shark had tooth whorls, which are spirally arranged, saw-like teeth, that made it a total nightmare to the unfortunate prey it fed on.

Did you recognize any of the weird sharks on this list? How about these 25 Most Bizarre Animals Ever?