Nightmare fuel

In this week’s installment of ‘Holy crap what is that thing I think I saw it once in a nightmare’, we bring you the frilled shark. Trust me when I say you have not seen anything this creepy in your lifetime.

The frilled shark is called a “living fossil” because it’s so old and primitive, and very rarely seen. As you can see in that shudder-inducing video, it has a body akin to that of a large eel, and it attacks much in the same way a snake does – by bending back and then lunging forward. This thing pretty much doesn’t even look like a shark, but the Chlamydoselachus anguineus, one of the two remaining species of the Chlamydoselachidae family, most definitely is.

Here’s a fun fact for all my Kiwi followers – this little beauty has been found around New Zealand, though usually it sticks to depths of a couple hundred metres, even being found once as deep as 1,570m.

It’s been suggested that this species of shark – or a relative – could be behind reports of sea serpents back in the day. Growing up to about two metres, it doesn’t seem big enough, but then what do I know about sea serpents? Nothing, my friends. I know nothing.

So now that you have the mental image of that thing swim-slithering towards you like a weird, snake-eel-shark hybrid, please enjoy the rest of your day.