The cookie cutter shark is the strongest shark, don't at me. Despite being a little bitty baby that's barely bigger than your forearm, the cookie cutter shark is one of the more deadly sharks you can encounter in the
ocean. The reason why is because of its iconic circle shaped bites it will take out of its prey, I'm not joking, they are perfectly circular. The cookie cutter shark's iconic bites have been found on many different
marine animals and even man-made things such as submarines and internet cables. Other than the bite, the shark has a cigar-like appearance, causing many to call it the cigar shark as opposed to the cookie
cutter shark and, as mentioned before are very small, being about 42-56 cm long (16.5-22 inches in freedom units). In the day, the shark will hang out in the midnight zone of the ocean, commonly in schools,
however, once it turns dark, the sharks migrate vertically to higher points of the ocean in order to hunt, typically going for bigger pray to all take a chunk off, they have been labeled as not dangerous to humans,
but that doesn't mean a bite from them will hurt so be careful! One of the cooler things about it is that it GLOWS, that's right, the cookie shaped bites aren't the only cool thing about it, with the shark having
bioluminescence in its dark collar under the fish. It is believed that this glow is meant to be a lure to lure animals with amazing vision as the individual photophores are too small to be seem by a normal human. The
lure allows the shark to act like a smaller fish, further heightened by the fact that they travel in schools, looking like a school of innocent fish when in reality, they're quite scary. What's even more interesting is that the
lure uses the non-illuminated parts to act as the fish while the illuminated parts are used to blend into the ocean, as the lights are meant to blend in with the actual colors of the ocean while the rest of the shark stays
hidden, what's more interesting is that the colors it has is very limited, leading to marine biologists to believe this is the reason why it has to migrate vertically, to match with the colors of the ocean. This is the only
known fish that uses its illumination this way which I personally think is a way cooler feature than its cookie-shaped bites. So back to the bites, the shark will attack basically anything that's bigger than it, even the
great white shark (the fraud of sharks), these bites aren't really that deep, being about 7 cm deep (2.8 in) so in reality the fish being hunted by the shark would only die after a lot of bites. The cookie cutter shark
is also considered a parasite, a facultative ectoparasite specifically because it ingests the flesh off bigger animals while still eating smaller prey. Long story short, the cookie cutter shark is a very hungry little fella
who will basically eat anything but I think they're cool so they get a spot here.
