Tiger Shark: Characteristics And Feeding
The tiger shark has a menacing name, but while it’s certainly a carnivore and a hunter, it’s not as terrible as it sounds: its name comes from the characteristic stripes it wears on its back.
Tiger Shark Characteristics
The tiger shark is one of the largest species of sharks: despite generally being, on average, three meters in length, specimens close to five meters have already been seen. They generally weigh around 600 kilograms, although the largest tiger shark ever found exceeds a ton.
Even though it looks like a huge animal, this is just a first impression: its head is certainly big, but its body thins towards the dorsal fin. The tail is thin and narrow in relation to the head.
The tiger shark gets its name because of its colors: on the upper part of the body there are darker stripes, reminiscent of felines. On the rest of the body, they are bluish or grayish, while the belly and underside of the fins are white.
This gives him an almost perfect camouflage: to hunt, he uses the surprise factor. A blue striped body allows it to camouflage on the seabed and not be noticed by its prey.
The tiger shark’s snout is characteristic: it is broad but flat, giving it an almost rectangular appearance. The nasal cavities are right in front, almost at the top of the muzzle. Like many other sharks, it has a large mouth with several rows of teeth, located almost in front position.
Another curiosity of this animal is that, if it loses one of its teeth, another is always born to replace the previous one.
In addition to the dorsal fin, it also has two frontal lateral fins. The tail fins have a sickle shape and the upper fin is much more developed. In addition, it has four rear fins: a small dorsal and three abdominal fins of different sizes.
food
The tiger shark is a carnivorous animal and is a hunter. His diet is very varied and he feeds on the animals he can find: fish, molluscs, squid, turtles… even marine mammals such as seals or dolphins. In addition, you can even hunt seabirds. It is undemanding and therefore feeds on a wide variety of prey.
Despite its size and the strength of its mouth, it does not have an elaborate hunting strategy: everything is limited to the surprise factor. The tiger shark attacks from below, while using its ability to camouflage itself under the sea. It gets under its prey, chasing it, and only attacks when it’s sure it’s going to take it by surprise and that the prey won’t escape.
The tiger shark is an important regulator of wildlife in certain coral reefs and marine meadows: with its food, but also its threatening presence, it prevents many of the larger fish and animals from staying too long in these places and degrading the ecosystem.
Habitat
Tiger sharks are distributed in almost all seas on the planet, provided they are temperate waters. It is found mainly on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, between Japan and New Zealand, but it can also be seen in the Indian Ocean and even the Atlantic; it surrounds the coast of America and the north and center of Africa.
In general, it likes warm waters and close to the coast. It is not an animal of great depth, as part of its prey is on the surface or almost on the surface.
Threats to Tiger Shark
In the rank of extinction dangers, the tiger shark is considered to be little threatened. There are many other species in your family that are at much greater risk of disappearing. However, several countries banned its hunting and measures were taken to prevent its population from declining.
The tiger shark is not a threat to humans. There are only a dozen attacks a year on the entire planet, and most of them are not deadly: it has been discovered that when it attacks a human, it does so by mistake. When the animal realizes that it is not the prey it was expecting, it releases the person and leaves him injured.
Furthermore, it has been found that, in captivity, he tolerates the presence of divers inside his tanks very well. So, coral reef divers sometimes came across tiger sharks that allowed them to swim close to them and even take pictures.
So despite its ominous name, the tiger shark is almost always harmless to humans. Its name comes from the stripes that mark its back, not from a threatening personality. People are not part of their diet, and if there is an attack, it will almost always be the result of a mistake.
