Extant animals size

[SameerluvAnimals]

The basking shark is the second largest living fish, after the whale shark, and one of three plankton-eating sharks besides the whale shark and megamouth shark. On average, it reaches a length of 6–8 m (20–26 ft) and weighs about 5.2 tonnes. Some specimens still surpass 9–10 m (30–33 ft), but after years of large-scale fishing, specimens of this size have become rare.They possess the typical shark lamniform body plan and have been mistaken for great white sharks. The two species can be easily distinguished by the basking shark's cavernous jaw, up to 1 m (3 ft 3 in) in width, longer and more obvious gill slits that nearly encircle the head and are accompanied by well-developed gill rakers, smaller eyes, and smaller average girth. The largest accurately measured specimen was trapped in a herring net in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, in 1851. Its total length was 12.27 m (40.3 ft) and it weighed an estimated 19 tonnes.