The biggest fish in the world - not blue whale as one might think, because the whale belongs to a mammal, not the fish. In this article we will talk about the largest representative of fish - whale shark.

The whale shark is the largest of the now famous fish. The average length of this "fishes" varies between 10 and 12 meters, even though some giant 18-20 meters instances.



The biggest fish in the world weighs on average 12-14 tons, although discovered in the late 1990s 20-meter giant weighed 34 tons, that allows to judge about large variety of sizes whale sharks.

Unlike conventional sharks, which we used to imagine connecting with the aggressiveness and mortal danger, this differs very peaceful behavior, does not present any danger for a person. Usually it does not pay attention to divers, allows you to touch her and can even ride on themselves particularly daring divers, although one should not forget that hit the tail of this giant able to kill or at least severely cripple.



In any case, especially "joyride" drive will not work, because the whale shark swims very slowly, not faster than 5 km/h, usually in the upper layers of the water, so often becomes a victim stalkivalsia it ships.



Whale sharks are easily recognizable by the characteristic dark gray or brown colour with a yellowish or white spots, yet still just learn it by sheer size.



As the main diet of whale shark is the plankton and small marine life, which it absorbs in similar whales manner lazily cruising with wide open mouth, then closing it, releasing water through five pairs half meter of gills and swallowing what was left. To keep production shark help smooth the ranks of 35 thousand acute small teeth.



The biggest fish are found mostly in the Pacific and the Caribbean, often swimming in other warm parts of the World ocean. The population of whale sharks and so was small, but under a real threat of extinction placed her fishermen South and South-East Asia, catching sharks in industrial scale and not worrying about the moral aspects of this trade. Recently, even in the conditions of total prohibition of fishing in connection with the threat of extinction, whale sharks continue to catch poachers, so recovery of the species is very slow pace.