smalltooth sand tiger
odontaspis ferox latin

Very little is known of the biology and behavior of the smalltooth sand tiger.

The smalltooth sand tiger has a bulky body with a long, bulbous, slightly flattened snout.

Smalltooth sand tigers have been caught at widely scattered locations throughout the world, indicating a possibly circumtropical distribution.

No pregnant smalltooth sand tigers have ever been found; this species is presumed to be ovoviviparous as in other mackerel sharks.

Until more specimens were examined in the 1980s, some authors speculated that this species represented an extreme variant of the smalltooth sand tiger.

The smalltooth sand tiger is a strong-swimming shark that may be encountered singly or in aggregations of up to five individuals.

Encounters with divers have shown that, despite their size, smalltooth sand tigers are docile and do not react aggressively even when closely approached.

Adult smalltooth sand tigers have no known predators, though they are bitten by cookiecutter sharks (Isistius brasiliensis).

Odontaspis ferox (Smalltooth sand tiger)

In the Mediterranean, smalltooth sand tigers occur at depths less than 250 m (820 ft), including at depths accessible to divers.

The diet of the smalltooth sand tiger consists of bottom-dwelling bony fishes such as rockfish (Sebastes spp.)

Fossil teeth belonging to the smalltooth sand tiger have been found from Lower Pliocene (5.3-3.6 Ma) deposits in Italy and Venezuela.

Discoveries, beginning in the 1970s, of smalltooth sand tigers in shallow water have raised urgent conservation concerns, as this species is apparently more vulnerable to human activity than previously believed.

Malpelo is one of the few places where the smalltooth sand tiger has been seen alive, in the dive site "El bajo del Monstruo" it is frequently seen.

It can be distinguished from the similar smalltooth sand tiger (O. ferox) by its teeth, which have only one lateral cusplet on each side, and by its uniformly dark brown color.

The smalltooth sand tiger was originally described as Squalus ferox by Italian-French naturalist Antoine Risso in 1810, based on a specimen from Nice, France.

Compared to the grey nurse shark, the dentition of the smalltooth sand tiger is less robust and lacks specialized cutting and crushing teeth, suggesting that it tends to tackle smaller prey.

The smalltooth sand tiger or bumpytail ragged-tooth (Odontaspis ferox) is a species of mackerel shark in the family Odontaspididae, with a patchy but worldwide distribution in tropical and warm temperate waters.

When the Odontaspis came to be recognized as a valid genus separate from Carcharias, the bigeye sand tiger was reassigned as well given its resemblance to the smalltooth sand tiger (O. ferox).

Whether the bigeye and smalltooth sand tigers belong in the same family as the superficially similar sand tiger shark (C. taurus) has been debated among systematists, with morphological and dentitional studies giving inconsistent results.

Each tooth has a narrow, awl-like central cusp flanked by one smaller cusplet on each side; this contrasts with the smalltooth sand tiger, which has two or three lateral cusplets on each side.

The smalltooth sand tiger has been protected by the Australian government since 1984; this came about concurrently with protection for the grey nurse shark, which had been decimated in Australian waters, so as to prevent any claims of confusing one species for the other.

A phylogenetic study based on mitochondrial DNA, performed by Naylor et al. in 1997, suggests that the smalltooth sand tiger and its relative, the bigeye sand tiger (O. noronhai), are more closely related to the thresher sharks than to the grey nurse shark, to which it bears a strong resemblance.

The smalltooth sand tiger or bumpytail ragged-tooth (Odontaspis ferox) is a species of mackerel shark in the family Odontaspididae, with a patchy but worldwide distribution in tropical and warm temperate waters.