{"id":10842,"date":"2024-10-06T12:28:05","date_gmt":"2024-10-06T06:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=10842"},"modified":"2025-03-29T23:00:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T17:30:18","slug":"what-are-hammerhead-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-are-hammerhead-sharks\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Hammerhead Sharks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Hammerhead Sharks:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Named for the unusual and distinctive form of their heads, hammerhead sharks belong to the family <strong>Sphyrnidae<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>They are characterized by a <strong>flattened hammer- or shovel-shaped head,<\/strong> or \u2018cephalofoil\u2019.\n<ul>\n<li>These distinctive heads serve multiple purposes, including <strong>granting the sharks360-degree vision<\/strong> as well as <strong>better hunting abilities<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>There are <strong>nine species<\/strong> of Hammerhead Sharks, each with varying lengths.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>great hammerhead shark is the largest<\/strong> of all hammerhead species, reaching a maximum known length of 20 feet.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Distribution<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>They are widely distributed in <strong>tropical and temperate marine waters near<\/strong> the <strong>coasts and above the continental shelves.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>They may <strong>migrate seasonally<\/strong>, moving equatorward during the winter and poleward during the summer.<\/li>\n<li>o In years with warm El Ni\u00f1o conditions, hammerhead sharks may range many hundreds of kilometres farther than normal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Features<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>upper sides<\/strong> of these fish are <strong>greyish-brown or olive-green,<\/strong> and they have <strong>white bellies.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>They have very impressive <strong>triangular, serrated teeth<\/strong>\u2014like the edge of a saw&#8217;s blade.<\/li>\n<li>The hammerhead also has <strong>special sensors across its head<\/strong> that helps it <strong>scan for food<\/strong> in the ocean.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>They are <strong>viviparous<\/strong>: they retain fertilized eggs within the body and give birth to live young<\/li>\n<li>They can live 20-30 years.<\/li>\n<li>They are <strong>exothermic animals<\/strong>, meaning that they have <strong>no internal way to control<\/strong> their <strong>body temperature.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Hammerhead sharks are <strong>one of the most threatened shark families,<\/strong> mainly due to overexploitation, with <strong>all species but one<\/strong> (Sphyrna gilberti) being <strong>globally listedas Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered<\/strong> by the IUCN.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1<\/strong>: What is a continental shelf?<\/h3>\n<p>A continental shelf is the edge of a continent that lies under the ocean. A continental shelf extends from the coastline of a continent to a drop-off point called the shelf break. From the break, the shelf descends toward the deep ocean floor in what is called the continental slope.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sci.news\/biology\/sphyrna-alleni-13318.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>New Species of Hammerhead Shark Discovered<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Named for the unusual and distinctive form of their heads, hammerhead sharks belong to the family Sphyrnidae.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}