Endangered
Smalltooth sand tiger
Odontaspis ferox
Smalltooth sand tiger is a shark or ray in the family Odontaspididae (order Lamniformes) — Odontaspis ferox, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The smalltooth sand tiger has a bulky body with a long, bulbous, slightly flattened snout. The eyes are medium-sized, with large, round pupils (as opposed to slit-like in the grey nurse shark), and lack nictitating membranes. The caudal fin is strongly asymmetrical with the upper lobe much longer than the lower.
The smalltooth sand tiger attains a maximum length of 5.2 m (17 ft) per Kukuev & Batal'yants, 2019 and a maximum weight of 289 kg (637 lb).
Range and habitat
In the eastern Atlantic Ocean, it is known from the Bay of Biscay south to Morocco, among them the Mediterranean Sea, the Azores, and the Canary Islands. In March 2023, the species was also found in The Solent after a dead smalltooth sand tiger washed ashore at Lepe, Hampshire, and the following month a 14-foot (4.3 m) specimen was found in County Wexford, Ireland. In the western Atlantic, it has been reported from off North Carolina and Florida (USA), the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico), Fernando de Noronha (Brazil) and even, much more recently, from Malpelo Island near Colombia.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
This species is thought to be ovoviviparous with oophagous embryos like other mackerel sharks.
In crisis
It is an active predator of invertebrates, cartilaginous fishes, and bony fishes from the benthic zone. Concern exists that its numbers are declining due to human activities in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, though existing data are inadequate for a full assessment of its conservation status.
Smalltooth sand tiger is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Smalltooth sand tiger, Wikidata item Q1110782. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
