Help me understand
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Sharks don’t have any body parts that can make noises. Whales and dolphins do.
This isn’t really a “fish vs. mammals” thing, though. There are fish like [croakers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_croaker) that can make noises too!
So there’s not really an answer. Sharks never needed to be able to make noises, and if any evolved the capability it didn’t make them better at breeding, so it didn’t become a dominant trait of sharks. On the other hand, whales and dolphins form social groups crucial to their survival, and being able to make noises made them better at that. So the ones who could make noises had more babies thus it became a dominant trait!
Well only some shark species work in groups so that’s for starters, if cooperation and team spirit was more built in their reflexes we could have expected that kind of intelligence and the building of a rudimentary language
Mammalian noise making ability is based on sound waves propagating through air. It works because mammals evolved on land where they had a lot of air, and they happened to have a nifty pair of air sacs in their chest that they can use to expel air. So by adding a few well placed muscles at the exit the sounds can be modulated to create a variety of sounds.
Sharks are fish and live in water. Air sacs would be a nightmare to fill, and would require a lot of effort whereas mammals continually refill their air sacs for breathing anyway
So it’s all just based on where they live. Some fish make click-like sounds but they don’t have that vibration-based noise making system that evolved on land. And as they don’t need to evolve a way to communicate by sound (by compensating with other senses like electromagnetic organs in sharks, or feeling the tiniest movements in water) they have no reason to change their dna and whole body build just to accommodate a voice box
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