50 free Hard Sharks trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This hard sharks trivia quiz goes well past the great white. It asks which shark is the world's smallest and where it lives, which one has a gestation of up to three and a half years, which species walks across tide pools and survives two hours without oxygen, how deep the Portuguese dogfish goes, what megalodon's bite force was, why bonnetheads are omnivores, who first described the ampullae of Lorenzini and how far up the Mississippi a bull shark has been found. There are questions on shark evolution, filter feeders, bioluminescent species, Jaws, Shark Week, finning and the sharks that actually bite people. It is written for marine-biology students, dive clubs and quiz hosts who need a properly tough round; if you want the friendlier version, our main sharks trivia page has it. Expect most questions at hard or expert level. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia article on the species or topic, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many teeth can a shark shed over its lifetime?
30,000+
The teeth sit in the gums, not the jaw, and rows move forward like a conveyor belt.
Q 02How many gill slits do sharks have on each side of the body?
Five to seven
Sharks also have a ribless skeleton of cartilage and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head.
Q 03Across how many orders are the more than 500 living shark species divided?
Thirteen
Some of those orders are extinct; the ground sharks alone include the requiem sharks, catsharks and hammerheads.
Q 04The oldest total-group chondrichthyans, the spiny sharks or acanthodians, appeared in which period?
Early Silurian
That is around 439 million years ago; shark-like scales go back even further, to the Late Ordovician.
Q 05Cladoselache, an early shark, is famous for well-preserved fossils from which formation?
The Cleveland Shale on Lake Erie
Oddly, no claspers have ever been found on it, unlike its close relatives.
Q 06Helicoprion, a Permian shark relative, is famous for what bizarre feature?
A spiral tooth whorl
Alexander Karpinsky named it in 1899 from Russian and Australian fossils; the name means spiral saw.
Q 07Megalodon's jaws could exert a bite force of roughly what?
108,500 to 182,200 newtons
It lived from about 23 to 3.58 million years ago and its name simply means big tooth.
Q 08Pliny the Elder described fossil megalodon teeth in AD 73 as what?
Petrified tongues from the sky
The so-called glossopetrae were later worn as amulets and used as tableware supposedly able to detect poison.
Q 09Which Italian physician first described sharks' electroreceptive pores in 1679, without knowing what they did?
Stefano Lorenzini
The mucus-filled pores detect electric fields, but that was not proven until the 20th century.
Q 10What is the maximum known length of the dwarf lanternshark, the world's smallest shark?
20 cm
It is known only from the upper continental slopes off Colombia and Venezuela, at 283 to 439 metres down.
Q 11What is the largest reliably recorded length for a whale shark?
18.8 m
That is 61.7 feet, and its lifespan is estimated at 80 to 130 years.
Q 12The whale shark was first scientifically distinguished after a specimen was harpooned in 1828 where?
Table Bay, South Africa
Military doctor Andrew Smith described it the following year.
Q 13Roughly how many rows of tiny teeth can a whale shark's mouth contain?
Over 300
It also has 20 filter pads, and each shark's spot pattern is unique like a fingerprint.
Q 21One study found great white shark stomach temperatures of 24.7-26.8 °C in water of what temperature?
12.9–16.1 °C
That heat lets them stay active in cold water and launch full breaches at Cape fur seals from 20 metres down.
Q 22Who coined the great white's genus name Carcharodon in 1838?
Sir Andrew Smith
It combines two Greek words meaning sharp and tooth, and the great white is the only living species in the genus.
Q 23The largest preserved great white is a 5.83 m female caught in 1956. Which city displays it?
Lausanne
Her estimated weight was 2,000 kg; a 5.94 m shark from Ledge Point, Western Australia, is the largest reliably measured.
Q 14Which is the second-largest living shark after the whale shark?
Basking
Its name comes from its habit of feeding at the surface as if sunbathing, using bristle-like gill rakers to catch plankton.
Q 15The first megamouth shark ever seen was caught in November 1976 when it became tangled in what?
The sea anchor of a US Navy research vessel
It happened off Kahuku, Hawaii, and fewer than 300 specimens have been recorded since.
Q 16What top speed can the shortfin mako, the fastest shark, reach in bursts?
74 km/h
Its genus name Isurus means equal tail, from the near-equal lobes of its caudal fin.
Q 17How far up the Mississippi River has a bull shark been recorded?
Alton, Illinois, 1,100 km inland
Bull sharks tolerate fresh water but are not true river sharks like the genus Glyphis.
Q 18By what alternative name is the bull shark known in Africa?
Zambezi
In Central America it is the Lake Nicaragua shark, and it thrives in warm, shallow, brackish water.
Q 19Which shark ranks second only to the great white in recorded fatal attacks on humans?
Tiger
It is also nicknamed the garbage eater for the licence plates and tyres found in its stomach.
Q 20Of 500-plus shark species, how many have double-digit tallies of fatal unprovoked attacks?
Three
The great white, tiger and bull; worldwide there are only around 80 unprovoked attacks a year.
Q 24What is the technical name for the flattened, T-shaped head of a hammerhead shark?
Cephalofoil
It gives binocular vision and more room for electroreceptors, and hammerheads unusually school by day and hunt alone at night.
Q 25The bonnethead was the first shark found to be omnivorous. What plant makes up about 62% of its gut contents?
Seagrass
The whale shark was the second omnivorous species found; the bonnethead is also the only shark with head shape differing between sexes.
Q 26Which deep-sea shark, described in 1898, has pink skin and highly protrusible jaws?
Goblin
Its lineage is some 125 million years old, and its long snout is covered in ampullae of Lorenzini.
Q 27The frilled shark's gestation period can last how long?
Up to 3.5 years
It swallows prey whole with 300 recurved needle-like teeth and moves like an eel.
Q 28The epaulette shark can survive complete lack of oxygen for how long?
Two hours
It copes with night-time hypoxia in tide pools by boosting blood flow to the brain, and it walks on its paired fins rather than swimming.
Q 29What is the deepest-living species known, recorded down to 3,675 m?
Portuguese dogfish
Its eyes are tuned to spot the bioluminescence of prey, since sunlight never reaches that depth.
Q 30Which is the largest luminous vertebrate on record?
Kitefin
Most are 1 to 1.4 m long, with a maximum reported length of possibly 1.8 m.