Critically Endangered
Spotted houndshark
Triakis maculata
The spotted houndshark is a houndshark of the family Triakidae found in tropical waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America.
Appearance
It is a robust species with a rounded snout, widely separated, lobed nasal flaps, and long upper lip grooves that extend as far as the junction of the jawbones. Sometimes the body is uniform in colour but more often it is finely spotted with black.
The spotted houndshark grows to a length around 180 cm (71 in) or exceptionally 240 cm (94 in).
Range and habitat
The spotted houndshark is found on the continental shelves in the eastern Pacific, from the Galapagos Islands and Peru southwards to the north of Chile, between latitudes 0° and 30° S. The spotted houndshark is a houndshark of the family Triakidae found in tropical waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. The reproduction of this houndshark gives birth to live young, with a litter of 14 pups being found in one female with a birth size of 30 to 40 centimetres (12 to 16 in).
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Their diet is believed to consist mainly of crustaceans.
In crisis
Spotted houndshark is Critically 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 Spotted houndshark, Wikidata item Q32460. 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.
