The Sharks— Part One 317 



The pattern of the Whale shark s hide sliows up clearly in this photograph, which 

 shows William Beebe pursuing a 42-footer during a New York Zoological Society 

 expedition in the Eastern Pacific. This shark was found off Lower California. But it 

 was not captured. Courtesy, Zoologica 



As the Whale shark swims, a steady current of water passes into its 

 mouth and out the long gill slits on either side of its head. But, as the 

 water flows through the gill slits, it is strained by gill rakers whose combs 

 are closely spaced. The tiny food particles and the small fish swept 

 into the Whale shark's maw are thus trapped inside and diverted to 

 its gullet. The food must be small because the Whale shark's throat is 

 \'ery narrow and makes an almost right-angled turn to the stomach. 

 This bottleneck would seemingly prevent the passage of any large fishes 

 —or a man who might stray into the Whale shark's path. A large shark, 

 supposedly identified as a Whale shark, caught in the Philippines, had 

 in its belly 47 buttons, 3 leather belts, 7 leggings, and 9 shoes. The 

 deductions possible from this find range from suspicions that the shark 

 was another species, that it had happened upon the remnants of a haber- 

 dashery washed out to sea, or that the shark happened upon a motly 

 group of men with a puzzling number of feet and legs. 



Little is known about the Whale shark's breeding habits. The clues 

 are sparse, despite more than a century of observation. In 1910, a female 

 examined in Ceylon had 16 egg cases in one of her oviducts. In 1955, 

 J. L. Baughman of the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission re- 

 ported the discovery of an egg case in 31 fathoms of water 130 miles 

 south of Port Isabel, Texas. The egg case contained a perfect embryo of 

 a Whale shark, readily identified by the conspicuous checker board pat- 

 tern of white dots and bars on its back. Baughman's discovery of the 



