Are Sharks Mammals?

Last year while staying on South Padre Island, Texas I made a point of taking my dog out daily for a game of fetch on the beach.  One day while we were playing a couple of young girls came up to watch Taggart play.  I asked them how their day was, and they said it was great but they said the day before was really cool.

While they were taking a walk on the beach, they came across a beached baby hammerhead shark.  One of them took it out in the water while the other one filmed.  She said she held it in the water for a few minutes moving it back and forth before setting it free.  Then one of the girls asked, “are sharks mammals”?

Are sharks’ mammals?

What a great question.  As soon as I got back to my RV, I pulled out my computer and typed into Google “are sharks mammals”?  I was informed that mammals are warm blooded and feed their young with milk.  Mammals also breath air with their lungs.  Sharks on the other hand are cold-blooded and are considered a fish.  Because sharks do not have mammary glands, they cannot feed their young and they breathe through gills.

Why do people mistake sharks for mammals?

Fish lay eggs.  There are certain species of sharks, however, that give birth to their young who are called pups.  These sharks have eggs that grow inside the body of the shark where they develop in the embryo within the shark and come out as pups.  Other sharks lay eggs which develop outside of the sharks’ body.

So the next time someone asks you “are sharks mammals” you can give them a resounding no.  In short, they don’t breathe air through lungs like mammals and they are cold-blooded unlike mammals who are warm blooded..