Wait – sit back down! It’s not an alien nor closet ghost but yeah, with 25 rows of over 300 teeth it could tear off your face. The picture above is a rare, frilled shark that was caught by a startled fisherman in Australia. Its oversized-mouth is packed with needle-like teeth and the shark’s weird-looking 6-foot body looks like an eel’s giving it a bizarre sea-serpent-like appearance.
The frilled shark, which gets its name from its six pairs of gills, is known to live at extreme depths in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and is very infrequently caught, or even observed, by fishermen. Its prehistoric origins are obvious (it’s been termed a “living fossil”) and it’ll scare senseless any fisherman that accidentally snags one. After changing his pants, the Australian fisherman explained his initial reaction to the strange catch.
“It was like a large eel, probably 5 feet long, and the body was quite different to any other shark I’d ever seen. The head on it was like something out of a horror movie. It was quite horrific looking.”
Little is known about the frilled shark. It is believed that they capture prey by bending their body and lunging forward like a snake. The frilled shark’s jaws are extremely flexible allowing it to swallow medium-sized prey and maybe small children. The beast’s teeth are small, needle-like and make it very difficult for the prey to escape once the shark gets its mouth around them. As with most fish, it likely does not hear well which means the frilled shark will simply ignore any screams of terror as it closes in on its prey.
Note: Geek Slop apologizes in advance to any little kids who were about to go to bed before reading this. As a token of his regret, he leaves you with this final picture of a frilled shark, grinning evilly, right before it lunges at the camera.
