are sharks considered mammals or invertebrates or what ??My son has a shark research project and all we ca?

Question

find is that they are part of the "fish family" ?/ Help !

Answer 1

They most definetly aren't mammals. They are cold blooded creatures. They are part of the fish family. Try going to discovery.com they have all the info you'll need.

Answer 2

Sharks are not mammals or invertebrates. They are cold-blooded and have a cartilaginous skeleton.

If your son will mention the number of shark species and then discuss the habits of the major shark families, he should do well.

Please ask him to discuss how much we need to conserve sharks. They are at the top of the food chain and we are killing them at a rapid rate. They are killed for food, their fins (he should mention "finning"), sport, man's blind fear of sharks, etc.

The scallop beds in the northern Atlantic are being destroyed by fish because there are too few large sharks to control them.

The slaughter of sharks is tragic, and it will not be without consequences if it continues.

Regards,

Scott

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Answer 3

Sharks are considered fish, they have vertebrate (all vertebrates are in the phylum chordta which has 5 classes being one and mammals being another (reptiles, amphibians, and birds are the other 3)). Most sharks belong to Class Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish; 300+ species) and have cartlidge in place of bone. This should get you started

Answer 4

Sharks are as you rightly stated part of the fish family, that makes them vertebrates but not mammals.
Although their skeleton is different to ours and that of bony fish in that is primarily made up of cartilage, they do have a skeleton and a backbone, making them vertebrates.
Mammals are usually endotherm (ie. they regulate their body temperature themselves and do not depend on ambient temperature) apart from a few exceptions; females bear live young and produce milk, they usually also have fur and some more subtle differences in anatomy are also present.
While some fish, especially sharks show a few exceptions that may make them superficially similar to mammals as the ability to bear live young (only some species) and the ability to regulate their temperature to some degree (species like the Great White for example), they are very different from mammals. I'd recommend looking both (mammals and fish) up somewhere like wikipedia to get a more complete picture.

As for sharks, sharks are really fascinating animals and there is a lot of interesting aspects that your son could write about or mention in his report such as their unique electro-sensory system and the Ampullae of Lorenzinii that allows them to detect electrical currents in the water and locate prey that way or shark conservation, an often overlooked topic as they actually have more reason to fear us than we do to fear them!
For more information I recommend the Shark Trust, they have several very informative sites on what makes a shark, senses, identification and information on individual species as well:
http://www.sharktrust.org/sdb_listsharks.asp
Also found these, a site aimed specifically at kids:
http://www.kidzone.ws/sharks/facts.htm
Some more shark info aimed at kids and teens also quite a nice section on conservation:
http://www.sosforkids.com/sharks.html
http://www.sosforteens.com/sharks.0.html
Also aimed at a younger audience, gives differences between bony fish and shark and species specific information:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/sharks/allabout/
For species specific information:
http://marinebio.org/all.asp?formaction=search&Class=Chondrichthyes
They also have a forum frequented by a number of marine biologists and marine bio students with a special section to ask questions for school reports and the like if you want to ask some more questions:
http://planktonforums.org/viewforum.php?f=9
The Monterey Bay Aquarium also has some information on specific species and conservation:
http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/sharks.asp

Hope that helped and good luck with the report!

Answer 5

They are in the fish family, because they don't breath air, so they aren't mammals like dolphins.

They have a skeletal structure, although it's made of cartilage, like your nose.

One nice online source everyone likes to use is Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark

Hope that helps :)

Answer 6

cartilaginous fish