Three tall tanks in the National Sea Life Centre in Bray, Co Wicklow, show visitors what sharks look like before they are even born.
The lesser spotted dogfish, a shark native to the waters around Ireland, looks more like a shrimp than a shark inside its shell, and is one of four species in the exhibit, which opened yesterday.
When the sharks hatch at nine months old, they bite their way out of the eggs, said Pat O Súilleabháin, manager of the aquarium.
But even though the sharks come out biting, it does not mean that they are necessarily dangerous. "When people think of sharks, they think of great white sharks," Mr O Súilleabháin said.
He wanted to give the public a chance to see each stage of a shark's life in hopes of dispelling myths about all sharks being bloodthirsty killers. "Maybe 12 people get killed by sharks in a year, but man kills 100 million sharks each year," he said.
As sharks are killed, it takes a long time for them to be replaced, because sharks reproduce in small numbers, Mr O Súilleabháin said. "We need to know what impact we're having on marine life," especially when it comes to sharks native to Irish waters, he said.
Mr O Súilleabháin said more Government funding needed to be put into research, and he hoped the exhibit would serve as an awareness campaign. "For an island nation, we are ignorant of what lives just metres away," he said. "We have a rich marine heritage."