Good at maths and into jazz: Nine extraordinary things you probably didn't know about sharks

Humans have more in common with these elite ocean predators than often thought. A little Miles Davis anyone? Sharks are among the Earth's original vertebrate predators – and after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they have developed some surprising traits along the way. Here are nine extraordinary facts about sharks. Sharks (or their close ancestors) survived all five of Earth's major mass extinctions – including the largest and most devastating, the Permian-Triassic extinction, or the "Great Dying". This cataclysmic climate event killed the majority of life on Earth, including around 90% of marine life. But sharks lived on. Today, they are found in just about every bit of the ocean. While sharks are often thought to be mindless predators driven solely by their instinct and voracious hunger, science suggests they're actually pretty clever and good learners. They can distinguish between subtly different sounds, as well as different abstract patterns and colourful geometric shapes. In one famous experiment, young grey bamboo sharks were shown to remember information about shapes and optical illusions for almost a year. They can also do basic mathematics, telling the differ

Jul 14, 2026 → Jul 14, 2026