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Discovery Channel kicks off its 26th-annual Shark Week on Sunday.

(Discovery)

Brace yourself!

's annual

begins Sunday, with a whopping 11 new specials and the largest lineup of shark-themed specials in its 26-year history. All this week, we'll be previewing some of this year's best new programs. But to whet your appetite, in honor of Shark Week's 26th year, here are 26 cool facts about sharks.

The whale shark may live up to 150 years, making it one of the longest-living creatures on Earth.

Whale sharks are the world's biggest fish — and they have big families, too. One whale shark can give birth to 300 live shark pups in one litter.

The smallest sharks are the dwarf lantern shark and pygmy shark, which are only 6 inches long.

Swell sharks swallow water and swell in size to intimidate their predators.

The jaws of large sharks are about twice as powerful as the jaws of a lion and can generate up to 40,000 pounds per square inch of pressure in a single bite.

Shark meat has an unpopular image as food, so fish markets and chefs change the name of shark meat to rock salmon, rock eel, huss or flake.

Port Jackson sharks lay eggs that have a corkscrew shape.

Basking sharks suck in more than 10,000 quarts of plankton-filled water in one hour.

Great White, Mako and Salmon sharks will drown if they stop moving because water won't pass over their gills.

Very few of the more than 350 species of shark — a small minority — are known to attack humans.

Sharks don't actually chew their prey, but tear it up into chunks and swallow.

Sharks' eyes are on the sides of their heads, so they have an amazingly wide sightline spanning nearly 360 degrees.

Sharks have highly tuned inner ears that help them hear their prey from a distance of up to two city blocks away.

The Cookiecutter shark is a master of camouflage. This shark's underside glows, with the exception of a small strip on its neck that looks like a much smaller fish. Predators mistake this strip for a snack, and the Cookiecutter takes a bite of their flesh before swimming away.

A shark's tooth-shaped scales are designed for dynamic movement but have also been mimicked in biotechnological research for their ability to repel barnacles and algal growth.

Sharks can sense injured fish that make infrasonic sound vibrations in the water and quickly become an easy dinner.

Some shark species moms can be pregnant for up to two years.

Some sharks can glow in the dark using light-emitting organs called photospheres.

Sharks living in frigid waters can heat their eyes using a special organ next to a muscle in their eye socket to keep hunting their prey in extreme temperatures.

Sharks never run out of teeth. They have new ones on a "conveyor belt" at the ready to move up and replace any that become lost during feeding. Some sharks can produce over 20,000 teeth in their lifetime.

Sharks have existed almost unchanged for 400 million years – long before the dinosaurs – and yet are at risk from human activities such as fishing.

Salmon sharks are the world's fastest sharks and can swim up to 55 miles per hour. That's twice as fast as

Great White sharks eat more than 20 times what a human eats in a year.

The Bluntnose Sixgill shark can dive as deep as 7,550 feet, or the length of more than five Empire State Buildings.

The largest shark family, Scyliorhinidae, is comprised of about 90 Catsharks, many of which are commonly called dogfish.