Sharks have 8 unique senses. They are hearing, smell, lateral line, pit organs, vision, Lorenzini, touch, and taste. The shark shares many sense that humans do such as taste and smell, but it has three senses that we do not have. The lateral line, pit organs and Lorenzini are senses that have been discovered over the past 10 to 20 years, and play an important role in how the shark functions when swimming around.
The six senses which shark use very effectively for searching and hunting their prey are - Smell, Eyesight, Electrosense, Water Pressure, Hearing and Taste. Two thirds of a shark’s brain is devoted to smell. It can detect one drop of blood in a million drops of water, 1/4th of a mile away. Water continually flows through their nostrils, giving them olfactory information. Sharks have colour vision and see well in dim light (because of a mirror-like layer in the back of the eye.) It is thought that sharks use the ampullae of Lorenzini as a navigational device to swim by the earth’s magnetic field. The lateral line is a sense organ used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. The pit organs are used to sense temperature change.