Gabbie Hynek helps Haisley Hynek, of Newhall, touch a shark shown by the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium at American Legion in Marengo. The program was part of the Marengo library's summer reading program. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current) — Gabbie Hynek helps Haisley Hynek, of Newhall, touch a shark shown by the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium at American Legion in Marengo last week. The program was part of the Marengo library's summer reading program. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current)

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MARENGO — With two fingers, children gently stroked the small sharks brought to Marengo by the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque last week.

One of the most popular of the summer reading programs provided by Marengo Public Library, the shark program attracted nearly 150 people to the American Legion hall in Marengo.

Kennady McCaw, with her grandmother Brenda McCaw, decides not to touch a shark at the American Legion in Marengo Friday. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current)

Mississippi River Museum Educator Xanah Knoblich and Outreach Manager Megan Hahn taught children about sharks before allowing them to pet the fish.

“We have a lot of cool stuff at our aquarium,” Knoblich told her audience. Children can see fish, otters, sharks, turtles and waterfowl there. Last year the National Mississippi River Museum brought its stingrays to Marengo.

When children think of sharks they think of big, deadly fish, they told Knoblich. One child thinks of sushi.

But Knoblich said sharks are actually afraid of people and don’t like to eat them because sharks don’t like the way humans taste.

Only 88 people were bit by sharks last year, said Knoblich. And in most of those cases, the shark was provoked.

Sharks might bite because they are curious, much as a human infant puts things in its mouth, said Knoblich. Sharks might think a human is food, like a seal, but they don’t like the taste of humans and will immediately spit them out.

An epaulette shark and a coral catshark swim in a tank at the American Legion Hall in Marengo. The sharks were part of a summer reading program presented by the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium for the Marengo Public Library. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current)

Sharks might bite humans because the humans are in their homes and the sharks are protecting themselves from a threat.

“We don’t think of cows as a deadly animal,” said Knoblich, but a person is more likely to be killed by a cow than by a shark.

Rhett Roberts, of Victor, pets a shark while his aunt, Cami Steinford, take a photo. National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium brought sharks to the American Legion in Marengo last week as part of Marengo Public Library's summer reading program. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current)

Kendalynn Gehring, of Marengo, volunteered to become a shark while the audience watched. Hahn gave Gehring skin, gills, fins and a tail while Knoblich explained their uses.

A shark’s scales, or dermal denticles, protect it from predators and reduce drag in the water. Speedo once made a swim suit that mimicked shark skin, but the Olympics banned the suits because the suits made swimmers too fast, Knoblich said.

“We use lungs to breathe oxygen in the air,” said Knoblich. “Sharks have gills to breath oxygen in the water.”

Some sharks have to keep moving to keep water flowing over their gills and oxygen flowing into their bodies, said Knoblich, but “smaller sharks can be stationary” because they can pump water through their gills.

Sharks have rows and rows of teeth and can lose up to 30,000 in a lifetime, said Knoblich. The teeth are replaced as the shark loses them.

Henry and Jon Fiser, of Marengo, look at shark information from the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium at the Marengo American Legion last week. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current)

Sharks use their tails to swim fast, said Knoblich. A shark moves its tail side to side. That will help a person identify the shark.

Whales and dolphins move their tails up and down, Knoblich said.

The top fin, or dorsal fin, is used to stay upright. “Without it, they’d go upside down,” said Knoblich. It’s not good for a shark to stay upside down for very long.

The side fins, or pectoral fins, help the shark steer.

“Sharks have really good vision,” said Knoblich. “They have even better vision at night.”

Sharks come in many sizes, said Knoblich. The great white is six to 11 feet long. The whale shark is usually 18 to 30 feet long. The biggest whale shark measured was 60 feet long.

“Whale sharks are pretty cool,” said Knoblich. They are the biggest sharks, but they eat the smallest food. “They eat itty, bitty fish from the sea.”

Whale sharks suck in water, and tiny hairs on the gills pull in plankton and small fish which the sharks swallow whole.

“They have to eat all the time … to stay as big as they are,” said Knoblich.

Tesa and Jay Davidson pet sharks at the Marengo American Legion during a summer reading program. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current)

A shark’s size depends on its job in the environment, said Hahn. Little sharks that help keep coral reefs healthy need to be small, she said., while sharks that roam the oceans need to be big.

The megalodon was the largest shark — about 100 feet long — but it hasn’t existed in about 100 million years, said Knoblich. She showed children a replica of a megalodon tooth.

Megan Hahn, with National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, turns Kendalynn Gehring, of Marengo, into a shark at the American Legion in Marengo. (Winona Whitaker/Hometown Current)

In the tank in Marengo last week were two coral catsharks from the Indo Pacific near Australia. These sharks will reach more than two feet long and live among coral reefs, eating invertebrates and small fish.

The Mississippi River Museum also showed an epaulette shark, which has a black dot on its shoulder which looks like a large eye and can frighten predators. “They might think that it’s a big animal,” said Knoblich.

Epaulette sharks can spend up to three hours outside water, said Knoblich. They use their fins to crawl from tide pool to tide pool “to eat all the little things in the tide pools,” she said.

The epaulette sharks can grow to two or three feet.