shark

shark

any of various usually ferocious selachian fishes, typically marine with a long body, two dorsal fins, rows of sharp teeth, and between five and seven gill slits on each side of the head

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

shark

[shärk]

(vertebrate zoology)

Any of about 225 species of carnivorous elasmobranchs which occur principally in tropical and subtropical oceans; the body is fusiform with a heterocercal tail and a tough, usually gray, skin roughened by tubercles, and the snout extends beyond the mouth.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

shark

large and ferocious fish, sometimes man-eating. [Zoology: NCE, 2493]

See: Deadliness

Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sharks

(dreams)

Please remember that the water in your dreams may be a statement about your emotions and the unconscious. Sharks, water-dwelling animals, could represent unpleasant emotions or difficult and painful materials coming up from the unconscious. You may feel some emotional upset, and the shark could be the symbol of the perceived emotional danger. Old dream interpretation books say that sharks may represent dishonest friends or reflect financial troubles.

Bedside Dream Dictionary by Silvana Amar Copyright © 2007 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Shark

 

a fish of the Selachii order of the Elasmobranchii subclass. The shark is represented by three suborders: living, primitive, and horn sharks. The living sharks (Selachoidei) vary in length from 0.5 m (Etmopterus spinax) to 20 m (basking shark). They have a fusiform body and five gill clefts on each side; only the saw shark has six. The scale is placoid, the mouth is located in the lower part of the head, and the skeleton is cartilaginous; these fish have no swim bladders. Sharks are widespread in coastal and open waters; some inhabit rivers—for instance, the Amazon and Ganges. In the USSR they live in the Barents, Baltic, Black, and Azov seas and in the seas of the Far East. Although most sharks lay eggs (large, in a horn-shaped membrane), some are viviparous. The majority are predators, feeding on fish, deepwater invertebrates, echinoderms, mollusks, and worms; sometimes they attack man. Sharks have commercial uses. Most sharks are caught in tropical waters. Those caught in the USSR include the spiny dogfish, the Greenland shark, and the porbeagle. Fish oil is extracted from the shark’s liver, the meat is used for food, and the skeleton is used to make fish glue. Primitive sharks (Hexanchoidei) have six or seven gill clefts on each side. They consist of two families: the frill sharks (Chlamydoselachidae), represented by the single species Chlamydoselachus anguineus, which is widespread, but rarely encountered (bodies measuring about 1.5 m), and the cow sharks (Hexanchidae). Horn sharks (Heterodontoidei) can reach a length of 1.5 m. One genus, Heterodontus, includes four species, which are found in the subtropical and tropical parts of the Pacific and Indian oceans.

REFERENCE

Nikol’skii,G. V. Chastnaia ikhtiologiia, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1954.

G. V. NIKOL’SKII

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.