In addition to their keen sense of smell, they have good hearing and sharp color vision. And for those prey that are stealthily quiet or camouflaged, these giants can detect the electrical fields that a potential victim's muscles give off through the aid of special organs known as the ampullae of Lorenzini, a network of jelly-filled canals around the sharks' heads. Lines of sensors running down their sides also help the sharks to sense motion in the water.

1.Great white sharks are huge.
The great white shark is the largest meat-eating shark in the world. The largest can reach more than 20 feet (6 meters) long and weigh more than 5,000 pounds (2,268 kilograms).

2.Great whites are world travelers
Great whites range across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, in the cold waters near the Antarctic and the tropical waters near the equator. They not only prowl far offshore in the deep sea, but venture close inshore as well to capture victims.

3.Great whites are deadly before birth
Great white sharks may begin devouring prey before they are even born. Baby great whites are known to eat each other while still in their mother's womb.

If any shark pups survive, a female great white can give birth to up to about 10, each already 5 feet long. These babies escape quickly once born -- their mother may see them only as prey.

The pups start off feeding on fish, including other sharks. As they grow, they eventually become large enough to eat sea lions, elephant seals and even small whales.

4.Great whites have keen senses
To find its prey, the great white's long, pointed snout is armed with a wicked sense of smell. These carnivores can sense even tiny samples of blood in the water as far as 3 miles (5 km) away.

In addition to their keen sense of smell, they have good hearing and sharp color vision. And for those prey that are stealthily quiet or camouflaged, these giants can detect the electrical fields that a potential victim's muscles give off through the aid of special organs known as the ampullae of Lorenzini, a network of jelly-filled canals around the sharks' heads. Lines of sensors running down their sides also help the sharks to sense motion in the water.

5.It's complicated

Great whites form quite complicated relationships with each other that scientists are only now coming to understand. Large sharks dominate over smaller ones, and females over males -- this focus on rank can help them avoid combat.

Great whites may swim by or alongside each other, perhaps to compare size and establish rank -- whoever submits flinches and swims away. They also sometimes splash each other with their tails when they contest ownership of a kill -- the shark that makes the most or biggest splashes wins.

6.They're speedy hunters
The streamlined torpedo-like shapes of great whites help these predators cut through the water, and their powerful tails help them chase prey at speeds of up to 43 miles per hour (69 km per hour).

The skeletons of great whites are not made of heavy bone -- instead, like all sharks, they are made of lightweight cartilage, the same rubbery material found in your nose and ears. This flexible skeleton helps sharks turn more tightly in the water than bony fish.

In addition, scales known as dermal denticles that are much like teeth cover great whites, all pointing backward, and as the predators cut through the water, these help reduce drag, helping the sharks swim more easily.

7.Not completely a cold-blooded killer?
To more successfully hunt fast-moving and agile prey such as sea lions, the great white shark has developed ways to keep a body temperature warmer than the surrounding water. In this sense, they possess aspects normally associated with warm-blooded creatures such as mammals and birds.

For instance, a web-like structure of veins and arteries located along each side of the shark known as the "rete mirabile" -- Latin for "wonderful net" -- conserves heat by warming the cooler arterial blood (which flows from the heart to the rest of the body) with the venous blood that has been warmed by the working muscles and is flowing back to the heart. This keeps certain parts of the body such as the brain warm, while the heart and gills remain at sea temperature.

This heat enables white sharks to exploit cold, prey-rich waters, but it also comes with a price -- they must eat a great deal to fuel their high metabolisms.

8.Deadly strategy

Once great whites have tracked down their prey, these stealthy hunters rely on the element of surprise to kill, lurking unseen from below their victims. Although their white bellies help give them their name, great whites have grey backs that help them blend in with the seafloor to creep up on prey. They are also known to strike before sunrise, when they are hard to see in the water.

Once they have locked onto their prey, the great whites then swiftly charge upward in a sudden, ferocious attack. At times they go so fast they can even burst right out of the water in a stupendous leap, with their prey struggling in their jaws.

9.Sharp bites

As dangerous as great whites undoubtedly are, their killer bites might surprisingly not be very strong, Their narrow heads do not leave much room for jaw muscles as those of tiger and bull sharks, which, along with the great white, are behind most shark attacks on humans.

Instead, the great white's capability to inflict extraordinarily lethal wounds is probably due more to its vicious, serrated teeth. The jaws of these sharks are lined with five rows of up to 3,000 of the jagged, triangular blades and each can reach more than two-and-a-half inches (about 6 centimeters) long.

Once these hunters catch their prey in their terrifying maws, they shake their heads side to side, sawing their victims apart in their mouths into bloody chunks. If any of these razor-sharp teeth break off, they constantly get replaced, so the sharks will never run out of weapons -- they may each go through more than 25,000 teeth in their lifetimes. Indeed, great whites often swallow their own loosened teeth as they gorge on their meals.

Large prey such as the elephant seal can prove dangerous for these carnivores, so they may inflict a monstrous bite and then swim off, to wait for their victims to bleed to death. To help swallow giant prey, the jaw is not attached to the skull, helping it swing down to make room.

10.Maneater?

Of the dozens of shark attacks each year worldwide, great whites may be responsible for one-third to one-half.

However, most of these are not fatal -- more people are killed in the United States each year by dogs than have been killed by white sharks in the last 100 years.

In fact, great whites are far more at danger from us than we are from them. Their numbers are rapidly declining worldwide, mostly when they accidentally caught in fishing nets.