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hammerhead

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hammerhead

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The hammerhead shark's name derives from the flattened projections at the side of its head. The eyes are on the outer edges of the projections. The advantages of this head design are not known; it may be that the shark's vision is improved by the wide separation of the eyes, or the head may provide extra lift by acting as an aerofoil.

Any of several species of shark found in tropical seas, characterized by having eyes at the ends of flattened hammerlike extensions of the skull. Hammerheads can grow to 4 m/13 ft in length. (Genus Sphyrna, family Sphyrnidae.)



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He met with more adventures than can be told, and narrowly escaped being caught by the Basking Shark, and the Spotted Shark, and the Hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf up and down the seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the scarlet spotted scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years, and grow very proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow, and he never found an island that he could fancy.
All I've ever seen of the great Land of Oz, Unc dear, is the view of that mountain over at the south, where they say the Hammerheads live--who won't let anybody go by them--and that mountain at the north, where they say nobody lives.
It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant specimens of molluscs which strewed the ground by thousands, of hammerheads, donaciae (veritable bounding shells), of staircases, and red helmet-shells, angel-wings, and many others produced by this inexhaustible ocean.
 
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