12 Facts About Great White Sharks

In 1974, Peter Benchley published Jaws, a horror novel that sold 20 million copies, spawned an iconic film, and catapulted the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) to infamy. Although the book brought him fame and fortune, Benchley came to rethink its negative portrayal of great whites: The author-turned-conservationist said in 1995 that if he was writing his book then, “The shark … could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim.” The great white is now classified as a vulnerable species. Find out why the truth about C. carcharias is often stranger, and always more compelling, than the fiction that obscures it.

1. Great whites roll their eyes as a defense mechanism.
2. Some reports of the great whites’ size are kind of fishy.
3. Great whites are closely related to mako sharks.
4. They can stay warm in frigid water.
5. No all great whites go after the same prey.
6. Great whites can go airborne.
7. They dine on the world’s biggest fish.
8. Attempts to place great whites in aquariums haven’t gone well.
9. It’s a myth that great whites don’t get cancer.
10. They travel huge distances.
11. Orcas prey on great whites.
12. They probably don’t mistake people for seals.

Great whites roll their eyes as a defense mechanism.

Many sharks protect their eyeballs with a pair of nictitating membranes, which act like protective, transparent eyelids. But not great whites—they don't have the membranes. Instead, their eyeballs roll backwards into the skull reflexively when a shark bites into a thrashing victim. This exposes the sclerotic coat, a fibrous tissue that surrounds the eye.

Some reports of the great whites’ size are kind of fishy.

The great white shark is a huge fish, no question—but some claims about its maximum size are probably exaggerated. In 1870, one zoologist measured the disembodied jaws of a large adult white shark and estimated that the whole animal must have been 36.5 feet long. But a modern reevaluation that compared jaws to those from other dead sharks showed that the creature’s actual length was probably about 16.5 feet, and the reports of the giant shark were likely a printer’s error.

Then there's the Cojímar specimen, a great white captured and killed near Cuba in the early 1940s. Those who saw it in person said the fish was 21 feet long and weighed 7100 pounds. Since then, the claim has been disputed by experts who, using an available photo, calculated that the animal’s real length was also in the ballpark of 16 feet. According to biologist Jose Castro’s book The Sharks of North America, the largest great white “believed to have been measured reliably” was 19.6 feet long. When it comes to weight, big males have weighed up to 2819 pounds while the largest female weighed 4343 pounds.

Great whites are closely related to mako sharks.

According to a 2016 paper, there are 509 species of shark divided into nine orders and 34 families. Great whites belong to the Lamnidae family, which contains only four other species: the porbeagle, the salmon shark, the longfin mako, and the shortfin mako. All five sharks have conical snouts, eyes that look solid black, and lengthy gill openings.

They can stay warm in frigid water.

Most shark species have no direct control over their body temperatures; they're about as hot or cold as the water they’re swimming in. But a handful of species, including the five Lamnidae members, are endothermic, meaning they can consistently maintain high body temperatures even in cold water.

The great white and its relatives’ muscles naturally produce heat as they contract, warming up blood in that area, which is then redistributed to other parts of the body. This allows great whites to keep their core body temperature as high as 25°F warmer than the ambient water, which means they can thrive in cold places. When muscles are kept warm, they work more efficiently, so great whites can swim faster and farther than many other sharks. On the flip side, great whites need to consume a huge number of calories in order to keep their body temperatures up.

No all great whites go after the same prey.

Great whites have varied diets and not all individuals share the same food preferences. In general, younger sharks mostly eat fish and squids while older, larger sharks tend to go after big targets like marine mammals. Catching small fish and biting into fatty seals are two very different tasks. This explains why juvenile white sharks have narrower teeth than adults do—the better to pierce the skins of slippery fish. Living sharks of every species possess multiple tooth rows and are constantly replacing old teeth with brand new ones. As a great white matures, its incoming teeth become broader, serrated, and triangle-shaped, allowing great white adults to tear large chunks of meat off their victims.

Great whites can go airborne.

Calorie-rich pinnipeds like seals and sea lions are common prey for large great whites, which typically attack from below in an explosive burst. The top speed of a great white is over 20 miles per hour, and during seal hunts, they can leap completely out of the water—a feat known as breaching—which leads to the successful capture of a pinniped 40 to 55 percent of the time, depending on lighting and other variables.

They dine on the world’s biggest fish.

In the 1960s, a 14.7-foot great white shark was captured near an Australian whaling station. Researchers dissected it and found two unusual bones in its stomach. They were later identified as vertebrae belonging to an adult whale shark that was estimated to be 28 feet long. These filter feeders can grow to be 40 feet long and weigh at least 7 tons; experts now think that great whites are scavenging on floating whale shark carcasses rather than hunting live ones.

Attempts to place great whites in aquariums haven’t gone well.

Certain sharks thrive in aquariums; great whites don’t. Every single great white that’s been placed in captivity has either died or been released after a brief stay. The Okinawa Aquarium, SeaWorld San Diego, and the now-defunct Marineland of the Pacific are among the facilities that have experimented with captive white sharks. At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one specimen spent a record-breaking six months living in a million-gallon tank. Once it began stalking other fish on display, however, it was set free.

Several factors make great whites ill-suited for captivity. To breathe, they must be in constant motion to push water over their gills, and aquariums don’t always offer enough space for this. Other issues include the species’ famously large appetites and its tendency to run into glass walls.

It’s a myth that great whites don’t get cancer.

There’s a myth that great whites and other sharks are immune to cancer. That misconception has led to mass harvesting of shark cartilage as an edible cancer cure. For the record, clinical tests have shown that ingesting shark cartilage in no way treats any form of cancer. Cancer has been documented in more than 20 shark species, including the great white; the first reported instance of a great white with cancerous tumors was announced in 2015.

They travel huge distances.

The great white inhabits many of the world's oceans, but they're most often found in waters with surface temperatures from 59°F to 72°F. The species also migrates seasonally. Some travel from South Africa to Australia and back every year. Other great whites cross the Atlantic, making long treks between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and the Azores, 2300 miles away. And each winter, scores of them leave Californian waters for a point researchers have nicknamed “the white shark café.” Located halfway between Hawaii and Mexico, this region doesn’t appear to offer much in the way of food, but the sharks remain there from April to July. Data from tagged great whites tells us that the males go on rapid, deep dives multiple times per day while hanging out in this area. Nobody knows why the white shark café is such a hot destination—but it might be a place where the fish gather to breed.

Orcas prey on great whites.

When great whites get knocked upside-down, they freeze up and exhibit “tonic immobility,” a state of semi-consciousness in which they’re vulnerable to their few predators. On October 4, 1997, an orca was seen barreling towards a great white shark (which measured 9 to 13 feet long) near one of California’s Farallon Islands. A human onlooker filmed the orca dragging the stunned shark around on its back. Eventually, it let go [PDF], and then ate the dead shark’s liver.

Between May and the end of June 2017, the bodies of four white sharks, all missing their livers, washed onto South African beaches. All four deaths have been attributed to orcas. A great white’s liver is high in fat and loaded with nutrients, which may account for the orcas’ interest in singling it out for consumption.

They probably don’t mistake people for seals.

Shark-on-human attacks are exceedingly rare, and it’s difficult to correctly identify the species of shark in the heat of the moment. According to International Shark Attack File, however, three species—great white, bull, and tiger sharks—are often to blame because they are large animals capable of inflicting severe bites, are found near shores and beaches, and have teeth designed to tear flesh. Since 1580, great whites has been implicated in at least 351 unprovoked attacks on humans (59 of them fatal). No other shark species is credited with even half as many.

Many believe that great whites attack humans because they mistake them for seals or sea lions (a human on a surfboard supposedly resembles a seal's silhouette). But great whites have proportionally large eyes and acute vision, so they can probably parse the difference. Great whites also strike seals with tremendous force but approach people with slower and more deliberately. In most attacks, great whites deliver a single bite and then leave the victim alone.

Biologists suggest that when the animals bite people, they do so out of curiosity (at least, in most cases). “Great whites are curious and investigative animals,” marine biologist R. Aidan Martin told National Geographic. “When great whites bite something unfamiliar to them, whether a person or a crab pot, they’re looking for tactile evidence about what it is.”

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A version of this story was published in 2018; it has been updated for 2025.