How many Teeth does a Tiger Shark have?

October 22, 2017
1 min read

The dentition of the tiger shark is designed uniquely for ‘puncture-and-rip’ style. The jaws are very strong with highly serrated and sharp, comb-shaped teeth. Both jaws have similar shape and size. It has asymmetric teeth with hooked cusps. A tooth contains a primary cusp along with small secondary cusplets. The primary cusp rips open the hard shell of the prey like sea turtles, while the cusplets breaks through the meat, bone and skin of the animal.

There are about 44 to 48 teeth on the upper jaw of the sand tiger shark and around 41 to 46 teeth on its lower jaw. Thus, the sand tiger shark possesses 85 to 94 teeth in total.

Sources:

Martin, R. Aidan. “Tiger Shark”. ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research

Knickle, Craig. “Tiger Shark”. Florida Museum

Cooper, Peter. “Sand Tiger Shark”. Ibid.

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