Tiger Shark (Galeocerdo cuvier): Facts, Diet and Habitat

What does a tiger shark look like?

The tiger shark is one of the easiest large sharks to recognize. It has a broad, blunt, almost square snout, large eyes and a wide mouth. The body is heavy at the front and tapers toward a long tail whose upper lobe is much longer than the lower one. A low ridge runs along the back between the two dorsal fins.

The back is gray, blue-gray or greenish gray, and the belly is white or pale yellow. Young sharks are covered in dark spots and vertical bars that merge into tiger-like stripes. As the shark grows, the pattern fades, so very large adults can look almost plain. Like other ground sharks, it has a third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, that can cover the eye.

Its teeth are unmistakable. Each one is broad, with a deep notch on one side, a tip that points sideways and coarse serrations along both edges, a shape often compared to a rooster’s comb. The teeth are similar in both jaws and are replaced throughout life, as described in How many teeth does a shark have?

Name and classification

The genus name Galeocerdo comes from Greek words for “shark” and “fox”, and the species name cuvier honors the French naturalist Georges Cuvier. The species was first described in 1822 under the name Squalus cuvier. In English it has also been called the leopard shark, spotted shark and, less kindly, the man-eater shark.

The tiger shark belongs to the ground sharks, order Carcharhiniformes, the largest order of sharks, which also includes the hammerheads and the bull shark. For a long time it was classified with the requiem sharks in the family Carcharhinidae. Because genetic studies and its unusual way of nourishing its young set it apart from them, many scientists now place it in a family of its own, Galeocerdonidae, as the only living member of its genus.

How big do tiger sharks get?

The tiger shark is one of the largest predatory sharks, usually ranked second only to the great white shark in bulk. Females grow larger than males.

A pregnant female caught off Australia was reported at about 5.5 m (18 ft) and more than 1,500 kg (3,300 lb). Larger claims, including sharks of 7 m (23 ft) or more, have never been verified. Growth rates vary between regions, and some young tiger sharks grow almost twice as fast as others.

Where do tiger sharks live?

Tiger sharks live in tropical and warm-temperate seas around the world. They are common off the southeastern United States, in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, around Hawaii and other Pacific islands, in the Indian Ocean and along much of Australia, and they occur off western and southern Africa, Brazil, India, China and Japan. They are rare in the Mediterranean.

They use a wide range of habitats: coral reefs, lagoons, seagrass beds, river mouths, harbors and the open ocean. Tiger sharks are often seen near the surface, but satellite-tagged sharks in the Coral Sea have dived to more than 1,100 m (3,600 ft). Many move inshore at night to hunt and back into deeper water by day.

They are great travelers. Satellite tracking published in 2015 showed adult males making repeated round trips of more than 7,500 km (4,700 mi) a year between Caribbean reefs in winter and the open North Atlantic in summer. Hotspots, migrations and seasonal patterns are explained in Where do tiger sharks live?

What do tiger sharks eat?

The tiger shark has the broadest diet of any shark. Young sharks eat mainly small fish, squid and other small animals. Once they reach about 2.3 m (7.5 ft), much larger prey becomes common: sea turtles, seabirds, sea snakes, rays, other sharks, dolphins, dugongs and seals. Tiger sharks also scavenge dead whales and other carrion.

Sea turtles are a favorite where they are common. Those cockscomb teeth, combined with a powerful bite and a side-to-side shake of the head, let a tiger shark saw through a turtle’s shell, and in some studies sea turtles have turned up in up to about one in five adult stomachs. Turtles such as the green sea turtle are among their main prey in places like Shark Bay, Western Australia.

Tiger sharks are also known for swallowing things that are not food, such as cans, plastic and even license plates, which earned them the nickname “garbage can of the sea”. The truth behind that reputation is explored in Do tiger sharks eat anything?

Behavior and senses

Tiger sharks are mostly solitary and do much of their hunting at night. They usually cruise slowly, and their striped, dark backs help them blend in against the seabed. When close to prey, they can put on a sudden burst of speed. Groups sometimes gather where food is plentiful, such as at a whale carcass, where larger sharks appear to feed first.

Like other sharks, they find prey with a combination of senses: smell, a lateral line that detects vibrations in the water, eyes with a reflective layer that helps them see in dim light, and jelly-filled pores on the snout, the ampullae of Lorenzini, that pick up the weak electric fields of living animals.

Tiger sharks have a big influence on their ecosystems. In Shark Bay, Western Australia, dugongs, dolphins and turtles avoid the richest seagrass beds when tiger sharks are most common, which appears to protect the seagrass from heavy grazing. Scientists call this effect a “landscape of fear”.

Reproduction and life cycle

The tiger shark gives birth to live young, but unlike its relatives among the requiem sharks, it does not nourish its embryos through a placenta. The embryos first live on egg yolk and then on a nutritious fluid inside the mother’s uterus. After a pregnancy of about 13–16 months, the female gives birth to a litter of about 10–80 pups, among the largest litters of any shark.

In the Northern Hemisphere, mating usually takes place from March to May, and pups are born from April to June of the following year. Females are thought to breed only about once every three years. In late 2025, researchers tracking tiger sharks off Maui, Hawaii, reported what may be the first known mating aggregation of the species.

Pups get no care from their parents and face many predators, including larger sharks. Tiger sharks grow slowly, and wild sharks have been aged at more than 20 years. Their full lifespan is not known.

Predators and threats

Adult tiger sharks have few natural predators. Orcas have been recorded killing them, and young tiger sharks are eaten by larger sharks, including other tiger sharks.

People are the main threat. Tiger sharks are caught for their fins, meat, liver oil and tough skin, and many die as bycatch on longlines and in nets. Shark-control nets and baited drumlines set off some beaches in Australia and South Africa also kill them. Between 1959 and 1976, shark-control programs in Hawaii killed more than 4,600 sharks, including hundreds of tiger sharks, without measurably reducing shark bites.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classifies the tiger shark as Near Threatened, with populations declining in several regions where fishing pressure has been heavy. Because females mature late and breed only every few years, losses take a long time to replace.

Some places now protect them. Florida bans the harvest of tiger sharks in state waters, and feeding sharks is illegal in Hawaii. Shark diving with tiger sharks at sites such as Tiger Beach in the Bahamas and Fuvahmulah in the Maldives brings in tourism income that gives local people a reason to keep the sharks alive.

Are tiger sharks dangerous to humans?

The tiger shark is one of the three species, with the white shark and the bull shark, responsible for most serious unprovoked bites. The International Shark Attack File lists 142 confirmed unprovoked tiger shark bites, 39 of them fatal, second only to the white shark. Most bites happen in warm, murky water near reefs, river mouths and harbors, especially around Hawaii and other tropical islands.

Even so, the risk is very small. Millions of people swim, surf and dive in tiger shark waters every year, and bites remain rare events. The overall numbers are explained in How often do sharks attack humans? Following local advice, avoiding murky water and river mouths after heavy rain, and staying out of the water at dusk and night all lower the risk further. Anyone bitten needs emergency medical help immediately: call 911 (US), 112 (EU) or 999 (UK).

Myths and facts

Myth: tiger sharks hunt people. People are not normal prey for tiger sharks. Many bites probably happen in poor visibility, when a shark investigates an unfamiliar object, and the great majority of encounters between divers and tiger sharks pass without incident.

Myth: a tiger shark keeps its stripes for life. The bold pattern belongs to young sharks. In large adults it fades to faint bars or disappears almost completely.

Fact: tiger sharks even eat land birds. A 2019 study found that young tiger sharks in the northern Gulf of Mexico regularly eat songbirds, such as wrens and thrashers, that fall into the sea from exhaustion during autumn migration storms.