A Whale Shark feeding on plankton.

It’s easy to be misled by the popular image of the shark as a voracious predator. While it’s true that some species do attack and consume large prey, most sharks are adapted to eat other, more abundant local food sources.

Ironically, the largest shark of all, the whale shark, lives almost exclusively on a diet of plankton and small fish, while hunters, like white sharks, eat everything from large fish to seals and even whale carcasses. In between these extremes, sharks are known to feed on everything from small crustaceans - such as crabs and lobsters - to squid, schooling fish, bottom-living molluscs and even sea-birds.

Perhaps the most famously greedy and opportunistic of all is the tiger shark. All sorts of things have been found in the stomachs of the tiger shark, including vehicle licence plates, gasoline canisters, tyres, lengths of chain and other man-made objects as well as a galaxy of natural items, such as sea snakes, turtles and albatrosses.