🤯 Did You Know (click to read)
Megamouth sharks are believed to be ovoviviparous, meaning embryos develop inside eggs that hatch within the mother’s body.
Documented juvenile megamouth sharks have measured around 1.7 to 1.8 meters at birth, meaning they begin life longer than most fully grown humans. This extreme birth size is likely an adaptation to deep-sea survival, reducing vulnerability to predators immediately after birth.
💥 Impact (click to read)
Unlike many fish that hatch at just a few centimeters, a megamouth pup starts life the length of a tall adult. That scale jump at birth represents one of the most dramatic size baselines among sharks, compressing what would be years of growth in other species into prenatal development.
Such massive newborn size implies enormous maternal energy investment and suggests that reproduction is infrequent. In deep ocean ecosystems where encounters are rare and food is patchy, producing fewer but gigantic offspring may be the only viable evolutionary strategy.
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