Great hammerhead
The biggest hammerhead, up to 20 feet long, with a tall fin on its back. Its favorite food is stingrays.
Real photo📏 Hammerheads by the numbers
Tap a card to see how it compares to you!
🔨 What's the hammer for?
- A hammerhead's wide, flat head has a fancy name: the cephalofoil (say "SEF-uh-lo-foil").
- The eyes sit at the tips of the hammer, so a hammerhead can look up and down at the same time and see almost all the way around.
- The nostrils are spread far apart too, which helps them figure out which way a smell is coming from.
- The wide head works a bit like an airplane wing, helping the shark turn quickly.
👀 Try it: Hold your hands out wide beside your eyes. Can you see more of the room? That's a tiny bit like a hammerhead!
⚡ A secret electric sense
- Every living animal gives off a tiny electric signal, much too small for people to feel.
- A hammerhead's head is covered in little sensor spots that can feel those signals.
- It sweeps its head over the sand like a metal detector to find stingrays hiding underneath.
- Because its head is so wide, it has more sensors than other sharks and can search a bigger area at once.
🦈 Kinds of hammerheads
There are about 9 kinds of hammerhead sharks. They live in warm oceans all around the world, often near coasts and islands.
Scalloped hammerhead
The front of its head has wavy bumps, like the edge of a seashell. Famous for swimming in big schools.
Real photo
Bonnethead
The smallest hammerhead, with a smooth, rounded head shaped like a shovel. It even eats plants!
Real photo🐟 Big schools by day
- During the day, scalloped hammerheads gather in big groups called schools, sometimes 100 sharks or more!
- Famous school spots are near ocean islands like the Galápagos and Cocos Island.
- At night, the school splits up and each shark goes off to hunt on its own.
- Some hammerheads also travel long distances in summer, looking for cooler water.
🧽 The shark car wash
Sharks can get tiny pests stuck to their skin. So hammerheads visit special spots on the reef called cleaning stations.
The shark slows down, and little fish like butterflyfish swim right up and nibble the pests off. The shark gets clean, and the little fish get a snack. Everybody wins! 🎉
🍼 Hammerhead pups
- Hammerheads don't lay eggs. Their babies, called pups, are born alive.
- A great hammerhead mom can have anywhere from 6 to 42 pups at a time.
- Newborn pups are about 2 feet long, and their heads are softer and more rounded than their parents'.
- Pups grow up in warm, shallow nurseries like bays and mangrove lagoons, where it's easier to hide from big fish.
- From the day they're born, hammerhead pups take care of themselves.
🍽️ What do hammerheads eat?
🐟
Fish of all kinds.
🦑
Squid, crabs and lobsters.
🌊
Stingrays are a great hammerhead's favorite. It uses its head to keep a stingray still on the sand.
🌱
Bonnetheads also eat seagrass! Sometimes about half their food is plants.
Scientists were amazed to learn that bonnetheads can actually digest seagrass. They're the first sharks known to be omnivores, which means they eat both animals and plants!
🥗 The shark that eats salad
The little bonnethead lives in shallow, sunny water full of seagrass meadows. While it hunts for crabs and shrimp, it swallows lots of seagrass too.
For a long time, people thought that was an accident. But in 2018, scientists found that bonnetheads really do digest and use the seagrass, like a shark-sized salad! 🥗
🤔 Think about it: Most sharks only eat meat. Why might eating plants be helpful for a shark that lives in a seagrass meadow?
❓ The Hammerhead Quiz
How much do you know? Answer the questions one at a time.
🧙 Ask the Animal Wizard
The Animal Wizard knows all about hammerheads. Type a question and press Ask! Curious about a different animal?
You can ask up to 10 questions in a chat.
The Animal Wizard uses AI, so it can make mistakes. If something sounds surprising, check with a grown-up!
🎬 Hammerhead videos
Watch these with a grown-up. They open on YouTube.
💚 How can we help hammerheads?
Great and scalloped hammerheads are endangered. Many get caught in fishing nets by accident, and too many are taken from the ocean.
Good news: Places like the Galápagos protect huge areas of ocean where hammerheads can swim safely! 🎉
And don't worry: hammerheads are shy around people, and bites are very, very rare. Sharks aren't monsters. They help keep the ocean healthy!
- 📚 Learn and share: tell someone a cool hammerhead fact, and that sharks aren't scary monsters.
- 🏖️ Keep beaches clean: pick up trash so it doesn't wash into the ocean.
- 🐠 Visit an aquarium that helps protect sharks.
- 🌊 Be ocean-smart: at the beach, swim where lifeguards say it's safe, and enjoy wild animals from a distance.
