Facts about Tiger Shark
- 09
Second only to great white sharks in recorded attacks on humans, tiger sharks are considered one of the most dangerous shark species to swimmers and divers.
- 08
Nictitating membranes covering tiger shark eyes during feeding protect their vision while attacking prey, a defensive adaptation absent in many other shark species.
- 07
Female tiger sharks can store sperm for multiple years, allowing them to produce successive litters without mating again, a reproductive strategy called sperm storage.
- 06
Nocturnal hunting behavior allows tiger sharks to feed primarily at night when they move into shallow coastal waters to search for prey in depths of less than 80 meters.
- 05
In warm tropical and subtropical waters, tiger sharks migrate thousands of miles annually, with satellite tracking studies documenting individuals traveling over 3,000 miles between feeding and breeding grounds.
- 04
Throughout the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans, tiger sharks consume sea turtles, seabirds, crustaceans, and even license plates, earning the nickname 'garbage can of the sea' for their indiscriminate feeding habits.
- 03
Viviparous tiger sharks deliver 4 to 30 live pups per litter after a gestation period of approximately 16 months, one of the longest among all shark species.
- 02
Tiger sharks earned their name from vertical stripes that fade as the sharks mature, typically disappearing by age 10 to 15 years.
- 01
Measuring up to 18 feet long, tiger sharks possess a specialized sensory organ called the ampulla of Lorenzini that detects electrical fields as weak as five billionths of a volt.