Frilled Shark Soft Stuffed Plush Toy

SERPENT OF THE ABYSS

❃ Coiling through the black waters of the deep ocean, the frilled shark looks less like a modern shark than a serpent out of legend. Its long, eel-like body, flattened head, and six pairs of ruffled gill slits — the fringed "frills" that give it its name — set it apart from nearly every other shark alive. Little changed for tens of millions of years, it survives as one of the last members of an ancient branch of the shark family tree.

❃  Inside that gaping mouth sit some three hundred teeth arranged in twenty-five backward-curving rows, each tipped with three needle-sharp points. Lined up like rows of tiny grappling hooks, they are perfectly shaped to snare the soft, slippery bodies of squid and fish, which the shark is thought to ambush by lunging forward like a striking snake in the lightless deep. Prey that touches those teeth has almost no way to pull free.

❃ Living at depths of several hundred to over a thousand meters, the frilled shark is rarely encountered and poorly understood, known mostly from accidental catches and a handful of chance sightings. Females may carry their young for up to three and a half years — one of the longest pregnancies of any vertebrate — before giving birth in the perpetual dark. A slow, strange relic of the deep, swimming quietly through waters that have barely changed since its ancestors first appeared.