Animal · United States, Australia, Bahamas
Tiger shark
Galeocerdo cuvier — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The tiger shark is a huge tropical shark named after the dark bars along its sides, and it eats a wider range of food than any other shark. Young ones are clearly striped, but the pattern fades as the animal grows older.
Picture credit: albert kok (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Albert kok (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Albert kok (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the tiger shark live?
Home: Warm coastal seas and reefs around the tropics.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Australia, the Bahamas, the Maldives, South Africa, Mexico, French Polynesia, Indonesia.
Conservation status from the IUCN: close to being at risk.
The short profile
Fully grown: 3.5 to 4.5 m long, sometimes over 5 m. It weighs about 400 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
A tiger shark often grows past four metres and can weigh as much as a small car. Its teeth are shaped like tin openers, with a deep notch and a sideways point, so they cut through the shell of a sea turtle instead of sliding off. It eats fish, rays, seals, seabirds and even other sharks, and researchers who open the stomachs of dead animals have found tin cans and number plates, which is why the tiger shark is nicknamed the dustbin of the sea. It hunts mostly at night in shallow water near reefs and river mouths, and rests in deeper water by day. Because it is caught for its fins, meat and liver oil, and grows slowly, the species is listed as near threatened.
Find it on the globe
Tiger shark 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 tiger sharks dangerous to people?
The tiger shark is one of the few sharks involved in serious attacks, second only to the great white in the records. Even so, attacks are very rare: the shark hunts in shallow, murky water and sometimes mistakes a swimmer for its usual prey.
Why is it called a tiger shark?
Because of the dark vertical bars on its grey sides, which look like the stripes of a tiger. They are strongest in young sharks and slowly fade until an old animal looks almost plain grey.
What do tiger sharks eat?
Almost anything they can catch: fish, rays, squid, sea snakes, seabirds, seals and turtles, and now and then a smaller shark. Their notched teeth make them the only sharks that regularly crack open sea turtles.
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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