Welcome to You Ask Andy

Holly Sue Howes age 12, of Tucson, Ariz  , or her question:

What is a hammerhead shark?

The spoonbill wading bird has/spoon‑shaped bill which he uses to scoop up his dinner  The sea fan is a colony of corals which forms e  stony skeleton, shaped like a dainty fan  The hammerhead shark has a head shaped, of all things, like a hammer  It is, in fact, one of the most amazing heads in the whole animal kingdom  Like most of his sharky cousins, he is a greedy, meat‑eating killer  He is one of the sharks dangerous to human life, and has been known to attack swimmers 

About 240 different sharks have been named and classified  Five species of the hammerhead prowl the waters of the Atlantis and no one knows exactly how many more exist in other oceans  All sharks belong in the scientific class Chondriohthyes ‑ meaning the gristle fishes  A true fish has a skeleton of bone, the shark and his relatives have supple skeletons of tough gristle 

The shark and the true fish bath take their oxygen from the water  The fish uses a pair of round gills where you would expect his ears to be  The shark uses five to seven pairs of gill slits which look like deep gashes across his shoulders  The fish is covered with dainty little overlapping scales, The leathery hide of the shark is set with toothy spikes  He has two sets of paired fins and a double row of dagger  sharp teeth in his jaws.

The hammerhead is a powerful animal, some 13 feet long, with all these sharky features plus the amazing head which is all his own  His huge skull is rather flat and on each aide it bulges out in a shape like the whacking end of a hammer  At the end of each hammer is an eye and a nostril 

We are not sure whether this strange arrangement helps or hinders the shark. Certainly eyes and nostrils buried deep in a bong skull have more protection  On the other hand, the wide separation between the sense organs map help the hammerhead to spot his victims and his enemies  Two widely separated guns can find a target range more accurately than two guns close together 

The big, streamlined animal is always hungry, always prowling for food  His diet includes any fish that swims, his own sharky cousins and his distant relatives the skates and the rays 

Mrs  Hammerhead, like many of the sharks, gives birth to live babies  The youngsters are about 20 inches long and there may be 13 or more of them  Each is born with the usual sharky features, plus the unusual hammerhead of his parents, At birth, however, the two bumpy hammers are folded back along the sides 

In Florida and the West Indies, the hammerhead shark is often hunted for his leathery hide and for the rich oil in his liver  Every one of these greedy killers taken from the sea means that countless smaller and more useful fish will have a chance to live ‑ which means that shark hunting is a very good idea indeed 

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