the.com/whale shark
the planet's biggest fish, harmless as a cloud and patterned like the night sky
means The whale shark is the largest living fish, a slow, filter-feeding shark that strains plankton and tiny prey from the sea despite its enormous size.
from A plain descriptive English name: it's a shark (so, a fish, not a mammal) that rivals whales in size and shares their gentle, filter-feeding habit — hence the borrowed comparison. 'Shark' itself is of murky origin, surfacing in English in the 16th century with no certain ancestor; one suggestion links it to German 'Schurke' (scoundrel), but that's unproven. Its formal scientific name, Rhincodon typus, was coined in the 1820s and points to its mouth — 'Rhincodon' loosely meaning 'rasp-tooth,' from Greek for nose and tooth.
- size
- Grows up to 40 feet long
- diet
- Eats plankton through a four-foot-wide mouth
- spots
- Patterns are unique, like fingerprints
- lifespan
- Can live over 100 years
- skin
- Six inches thick, toughest of any animal
isla mujeres mexico — seasonal aggregation of whale sharks off the yucatan peninsula, peaking june-september with 20+ sharks per dive site
oslob cebu philippines — year-round feeding aggregation where 20-30 whale sharks gather daily due to fish meal provisioning by fishermen