What would happen if sharks suddenly grew legs and came ashore?

Question

Okay, they could breathe and have adapted to air and wouldn't die etc etc ???

Answer 1

There'd be blood, running screaming, hurt feelings. It'd suck.

Answer 2

What would happen? Alright, let us give possibility to your assumptions. What is expected to happen once sharks came ashore? Sharks are heavy fish and a good swimmer and by growing legs then going to the shore, definitely it won't be an easy job to make steps to walk.It would take some time to balance and learn using its limbs taking few steps. Along such process,a great crisis will be encountered. Why? Because the sharks breath through their gills and like most fishes, sharks breathe by taking water in through the mouth and passing it out over the gills.There is no water ashore to keep them breathing. So to say, the thing that would definitely happen is for the shark to rush back to the waters or if the process of getting back to waters will be delayed or slow, there will be an easy "big fish catch" as either the shark will be weakened or die. Assuming they could breath air, still it would make them an easy prey. Their movement would be limited as the use of legs would seem strange and it won,t be easy to move due to their weights.

Answer 3

They'd die because their gills are adapted for obtaining oxygen from water, not air.

Assuming that they were fullying capable of breathing air, running on their newly-acquired legs, focussing their eyes out of water etc etc they'd just be like any other top predator, such as lions or tigers. Except that they'd be trying to muscle in on some other predator's territory and the established predators would have millions of years of adaptive evolution on their side to enable them to out compete the "land sharks". So the sharks would still most likely die out.

Answer 4

Assuming that they also immediately became able to breathe air? It'd be like dropping a bunch of man-eating lions on the coast. Mayhem and death for a while, but eventually those with rifles and shotguns would take them all down. Can you imagine how awesome THAT trophy would be for a hunter?

Answer 5

Why would they? All right I know why they might cos of man, pollution. Cetaceans moved from land to sea on land they were ungulates, living in th sea/ocean allows fish, sharks,whales etc to grow larger the whale shark for example the biggest shark in the world, would not be able to carry its weight on land as with the great white, tiger or bull sharks.

I mention the GW, Tiger and Bull sharks cos i take it that you are referring the dangerous species of shark in your question.

Answer 6

Being elasmobranchs sharks have cartilaginous skeletons. There legs would not be very efficient and I do not think they would get very far. Though I heard a great white shark was pretty good a golf and is leg-end in his own life time!

Answer 7

if sharks grew leg it will be of no use it will mere increase its weight as cause of buoyancy they cann't walk in water & if they come ashore they will die because their body is so designed to take in, water dissolved oxygen not the oxygen present in air and all of us know every living being needs oxygen for metabolic processes for survival........

Answer 8

They would simply become another predator with large teeth, no threat to man, just like big cats or bears - but they wouldn't be so successful because they would only just have evolved to walk on land.

Answer 9

Nature abhors a vacuum. Lawyers would grow gills and return to the sea.

Answer 10

I would hear the democrats blaming Bush for this problem.


Then, I'd hear the ships are coming in.
and fishermen will turn into hunters..only fishing on land instead of sea.

Answer 11

They would drown just as suddenly. Sharks are fish, and cannot live out of water.