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Baby whale sharks, also known as pups, are fascinating creatures that are often overlooked due to their larger counterparts. These gentle giants are the largest fish in the world and can grow up to 40 feet in length. However, baby whale sharks are still quite large, measuring up to 5 feet at birth.
A female whale shark was captured in July 1996 off Taiwan and had a startling surprise inside it. The whale shark was pregnant with more than 300 embryos! That means whale sharks may give birth to the largest litter of any sharks. Most other shark species give birth to only a few sharks at once.
The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is a slow-moving, filter-feeding carpet shark and the largest known extant fish species. The largest confirmed individual had a length of 18.8 m (61.7 ft). [8] The whale shark holds many records for size in the animal kingdom, most notably being by far the most massive living non-cetacean animal.
The smallest free-living whale sharks that have been measured were 55 cm (1.8 feet) long, which is likely their approximate size at birth. Each litter contains about 16 young, but litters of many more are possible. In the mid-1990s a female whose uterus contained nearly 300 young was caught near Taiwan.
In a pivotal moment for the understanding of whale shark reproduction, a 10.6-meter-long, 16-ton pregnant female whale shark was caught off Taiwan. Dubbed "megamamma", this extraordinary specimen carried around 300 embryos in various stages of embryonic development in her twin uteri.
Whale sharks spend nearly eight hours a day gulping around 10,000 gallons of ocean water. At nearly 40 feet long, they seem like they could eat whatever they want. But they’re really after...
One female, caught off the coast of Taiwan, was found to be carrying 300 pups and, most astonishingly of all, at different stages of development. This led to the amazing theory that female whale sharks can store a male’s sperm, choosing when her eggs are fertilised. Talk about an independent mum!
Whale sharks are obligate lecithotrophic livebearers, a reproductive mode where eggs are fertilized internally, and develop in the female until the end of the embryonic phase or later. There is no maternal nutrient transfer to the pups, which are sustained by egg yolk sacs while carried inside the mother.
Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are the largest shark, and indeed largest of any fishes alive today. They feed on plankton and travel large distances to find enough food to sustain their huge size, and to reproduce. Whale sharks are found in all the tropical oceans of the world.
Ali is a 20ft (6m) juvenile female whale shark that MMF has been tracking since December 2021. She's wearing a satellite tag on her fin and has so far travelled over 6,000 miles around the Coral Sea. Ali’s movements show that this newly-discovered whale shark population likes to swim north to Papua New Guinea to feed.