Shark senses: smell, hearing, and electroreception

What you’ll explore

Sharks don’t rely on one super-sense—they combine smell, hearing, vision, touch, and electroreception to build a detailed picture of their world. This quiz focuses on how those systems work and what they can (and can’t) do in real conditions.

Expect a mixed set of questions that moves between fundamentals (key organs and terms) and applied scenarios (how a shark homes in on a struggling fish, or why certain signals travel farther underwater).

Format and difficulty settings

Every question has 4 options and there’s no timer, so you can think through cues and eliminate distractors. You can also choose your question count and difficulty before you start—shorter runs are great for quick practice, while longer runs help you build consistency across topics.

To keep things fair, the difficulty is balanced: easier recall questions are mixed with more detailed items on mechanisms, comparisons between senses, and common misconceptions.

Common pitfalls to avoid

• Overstating smell range without considering currents and dilution
• Mixing up electroreception with magnetoreception (they’re not the same)
• Assuming hearing works best at “high pitch” rather than low-frequency cues
• Forgetting that behavior depends on context (species, habitat, distance)
• Confusing the roles of nostrils (smell) vs breathing (gills)

Skills you’ll practice

You’ll strengthen core vocabulary (like ampullae of Lorenzini), link structures to functions, and interpret simple cause-and-effect scenarios about detection and tracking. By the end, you should be quicker at spotting which sense is most likely responsible in a given situation—and why.