Sharks are an incredible species inhabiting the world’s oceans for hundreds of years and are truly dominant. Each and every detail you learn about sharks, whether it’s about their size, weight, features, or traits, adds to your curiosity and desire to find out more. One wonders how smart are sharks since they have been able to dominate the ocean world for centuries and seem to be capable of doing so indefinitely.
It is generally believed that sharks are here just to kill people or other marine creatures. However, it’s not true at all; instead, sharks have an integral role to play and help keep a balance in the marine ecosystem. Being on the top of the food chain, sharks help maintain the species’ population, as well as ensure healthy blue oceans.
That surely wouldn’t be possible if sharks weren’t smart enough, right? There is no doubt in saying that sharks, in addition to being important, are smart and intelligent sea creatures, but how smart they are needs to be figured out.
Are sharks wise?
Generally, sharks are smarter than most people think, but how smart they are depends on how you define smartness. Typically, sharks have larger brains and are capable of more complex behavior than most people anticipate.
How you measure smartness is another factor that influences your decision about how smart sharks are. However, the ability to perform complex behavior, social learning, identifying prey, their hunting techniques, and many other features portray that sharks are not here just for mindless killing, but they do have a brain and surely a unique one.
Remember that there are more than 500 species of sharks dwelling in the oceans throughout the world, and each one has different characteristics and qualities. They come in all varying sizes, shapes, and colors and can exhibit different behavior toward different entities.
There are shark species that can be kept as pets, while there are some, such as the great white sharks, which cannot be kept in captivity or else they will die.
There are species of sharks that give birth to live young, whereas many of the species lay eggs. You can get to know some more amazing facts about sharks here.
All in all, sharks of all species have a brain, and below we are going to talk about how smart they are.
How Intelligent are sharks?
Sharks are often portrayed as “mindless killers,” but how many of us know the truth about how smart sharks are? Contrary to popular belief, sharks are actually very intelligent animals who have a keen sense of socialization and a highly developed sense of smell in addition to their keen sense of hearing. There are people who believe that sharks are deaf or blind; surely, they need to find out the truth.
To begin with, let us take a look at some of the biological and behavioral evidence, starting with the size of the brain. In comparison to the size of their bodies, sharks have a bigger relative brain size than most other animals. It’s also surprising to see sharks have complex and intricate behaviors towards the same species of sharks, other shark species, fishes, and humans.
It’s not just that they migrate over long distances repeatedly and engage in complex hunting behaviors, but they also have complicated social interactions, having more interactions with certain individuals than they’d likely associate themselves with by chance alone. Their social learning abilities even allow them to learn new behaviors from watching another member of their species perform them.
In fact, sharks have a number of cognitive abilities, and there are claims that they are capable of solving problems and remembering the answers to puzzles for more than a year!
In a nutshell, they exhibit all kinds of intelligence-associated behaviors!
Conclusion
Sharks have always been portrayed as bloodthirsty monsters. But the truth is that they have an intelligence level that rivals most animals on the planet. Sharks have been around here for centuries, even long before the dinosaurs existed. It is truly their intelligence and capability to thrive in a variety of habitats that they are able to successfully pass through mass extinction events.
Do check out the other blogs on this site and get to know everything you want to know about sharks.