Animal · United States, Bahamas, Cuba
Great barracuda
Sphyraena barracuda — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The great barracuda is a long silver reef fish with a jaw full of dagger teeth that hangs motionless in the water and then attacks in a single burst. It can hit almost 60 kilometres per hour.
Picture credit: James St. John (CC BY 2.0) · Hectonichus (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the great barracuda live?
Home: Warm seas, coral reefs and mangrove shallows.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, the Bahamas, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Indonesia.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: usually 60–100 cm long, up to about 1.7 m. It weighs about 6 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
A barracuda hunts by surprise rather than by chase. It waits above the reef, silver and almost invisible against open water, then covers the last few metres in a burst of nearly sixty kilometres an hour and cuts its prey in half. Its jaw carries two rows of teeth: small ones to hold, and long pointed ones that slice. Young barracudas grow up among mangrove roots, where the water is shallow and murky, and move out to the reef as they get bigger. Divers often meet one hanging in the water and staring, which is unnerving but not an attack. The few bites on people have almost all happened when a swimmer wore something shiny that flashed like a fish.
Find it on the globe
Great barracuda is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Are barracudas dangerous to swimmers?
Very rarely. A barracuda may stare at a diver for minutes without doing anything. The few recorded bites happened when a swimmer wore a shiny ring or watch that flashed like a small fish.
How fast is a barracuda?
In an attack it reaches almost 58 kilometres per hour, but only for a couple of seconds. The rest of the time it drifts almost still, waiting for prey to come close.
Can you eat a barracuda?
Sometimes, but large ones are risky. Big barracudas can store a reef poison called ciguatera in their flesh, which cooking does not destroy and which makes people ill.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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