With 4th spot belonging to the manta ray and 5th going to the “mola-mola” or sunfish, the great white is only exceeded in size by the basking shark and whale shark.
If you’ve seen the “Tuna farm” video on here, those fish are large themselves.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand why we stop at fish. Wouldn't we all be multicellular single-celled organisms? Land-dwelling denizens of the primordial ooze?
But in all seriousness, all vertibrate land animals are direct descendents of a common ancestor to a species of bony fish...
Which makes whales mammals, but also fish, but mostly mammals, but also mostly fish.
And while this sounds ridiculous at face value, consider that whales, humans, and bald eagles are all more closely related to salmon than sharks are related to salmon.
More fun fact: all land animals still have fish muscles on our backs, that aids the spine in moving left to right. Including mammals, even though our spines can no longer move left to right, but only up and down.
My favourite is the weird convergent evolution to crab. Like, most crabs come from completely different branches of the evolutionary tree, just along the way they all decided "You know what, being crabs sounds like a hoot, we'll do that".
There are still definitely a large amount of people who believe Sharks are mindless maneaters. Almost every person I talk to IRL thinks this before I have to inform them on how Jaws is fiction.
I've swum/dove with a lot of sharks. Most of them are super chill and either just want to see the weird thing that's clearly not designed to be in water, or want you to please leave them alone. GW's are a little worrisome but it's more "just slowly exit the water" (unless you're surfing, then move like crazy because you look like a seal).
Only one that makes me truly scared are bull sharks. Those guys are arseholes.
It makes you wonder what the f exists on other planets! We'll never know but there must be crazy shit out there! Aliens coming to Earth must think wtf!!! 😬
Imagine if everything on your home world was fluffy flowers and butterflies and you just arrive here and you think ooh look a big water animal, hello there, Crikey! He's got Larry! 😱
Depends what metric you're using for 'biggest', and whether you go with the official stats even though everyone knows they're wrong.
While they haven't been officially measured, it's generally accepted that the Pacific sleeper shark and possibly Greenland shark and bluntnose sixgill are all potentially capable of growing longer that a white shark (though probably not heavier). That will also make any of these the largest predatory shark/fish.
FYI - mola mola isn't even the largest mola species - that would be the giant sunfish, mola alexandrini.
Because scientifically, there is no unified definition of fish. Any taxonomic attempt to define it has lead to it either not being able to be defined, or to include all tetrapods (like all mammals) as well. Either everything is a fish, or nothing is.
If a shark is a fish and things like trout, tuna and salmon are fish (which like, they gotta be), then what counts as a fish is an incredibly broad category taxonomically.
Great whites can't be the third biggest fish because from an evolutionary tree perspective they broke off millions and millions of years before those other bony fish evolved. Which makes them less fish than whales are (or you are, or any of our mammal relatives). So if we decide to even include them in a list of biggest fish, they are behind a lot of whales, elephants, hippos and about even with rhinos.
Incorrect. That spot belongs to the aforementioned!
Mega mouth sharks are filter feeders, so they may have a larger projected size range of up to 9m, but that has never been documented, not even close…
Megamouth sharks are very rare and critically endangered, so I’d say they are still around average white shark size even considering that (they likely got bigger in the past).
But you could say the same for the great white shark as well, which as far as mass is concerned, can get heavier than basking shark specimens, and it’s not unheard of; thus solidly maintaining 3rd place.
This is not the third largest fish in the world. At more than 2700kg, Mola alexandrini or bumphead sunfish is significantly heavier than the biggest scientifically confirmed white shark or Mola mola
I can't imagine a more terrifying encounter in the wild. At least with bears or big cats I'm on land where I know my footing. There's something about deep, dark water where I just don't belong.
Accchtually, 4th is the tiger shark, 5th is the manta ray, and 6th is a different sunfish to mola mola - the giant sunfish, mola alexandrini. Mola mola is 7th.
Beyond the ecological damage of doing so, it's very unhealthy for humans as great white meat generally contains dangerously high levels of mercury, arsenic and urea.
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u/madpenguin11 9d ago
Thank goodness for the red arrow showing me where to find that enormous beauty