A juvenile scalloped hammerhead shark , with its mouth and gills open, near the ocean surface off Hawaii.Because it makes them better hunters, scalloped hammerhead sharks have evolved a unique method to avoid losing body heat when they dive for prey in deep, cold waters: they close their gills.
Some fish, such as the whale shark , are able to conserve their body heat when diving through sheer size. Others, such as tuna, marlin and the family that includes great white and mako sharks , have evolved specialized heat-exchange systems at the gills that avoid too much body heat being lost. Body temperature remained constant for most of the dive until the final stage of their ascent back to warmer waters, when it would decline rapidly.Royer suggests that the sharks are keeping their core temperature stable by simply not opening their gills or mouth during the dive; effectively ‘holding their breath’. “If you don’t have water going over your gills, then you won’t be dumping your body heat into the environment,” he says.
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