Carcharhinus leucas
Bull Shark [+]

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Elasmobranchii
Order: Carcharhiniformes
Family: Carcharhinidae
Genus: Carcharhinus
species: Carcharhinus leucas
+ITIS +WoRMS +Conservation Status

Description & Behavior

The bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas (Müller and Henle, 1839), aka zambezi, ganges (often confused with the Ganges river shark, Glyphis gangeticus), ground shark, river shark, freshwater whaler, estuary whaler, shovelnose, slipway grey, and swan river whaler, is a massive and fearsome shark with a short, broad, blunt snout, small eyes, and triangular saw-edged upper teeth. Its characteristic barrel-shaped body lacks an interdorsal ridge. The first dorsal fin is broad and triangular and less than 3.2 times height of second dorsal fin. They are gray in color on the dorsal side and white on the ventral side, and have fins often seen with dark tips, particularly in juveniles. Females tend to be larger than males, reaching up to 3.5 m maximum length and a maximum weight of 317 kg. They are reported to live up to 25 years.

World Range & Habitat

Bull shark - Carcharhinus leucas The bull shark is a widespread coastal and freshwater shark inhabiting shallow waters in bays, estuaries, rivers, and lakes. They have a unique ability to penetrate far up rivers and hypersaline bays, particularly when they're young. They have often been found hundreds of km from the sea. Adults can also be found near estuaries and freshwater inflows to the sea. Found typically between 3-30 m in depth.

They range from the western Atlantic: Massachusetts, USA to southern Brazil; eastern Atlantic: Morocco, Senegal to Angola; Indo-West Pacific: Kenya and South Africa to India, and Vietnam to Australia; eastern Pacific: southern Baja California, Mexico to Ecuador and possibly Peru. They are a sympatric species (occupying the same range without loss of identity from interbreeding) with C. amboinensis and G. gangeticus. Off KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, it has been suggested that bull sharks and the very similar C. amboinensis avoid competing with one another by occupying separate habitats in the region.

Bull sharks are the most common of about 6 species of shark in their genus: the Ganges shark (Glyphis gangeticus), speartooth shark (Glyphis glyphis), Irrawaddy rivers shark (Glyphis siamensis), Borneo river shark (Glyphis sp. B), and New Guinea river shark (Glyphis sp. C), that can travel between salt and fresh water or live in fresh water for prolonged periods.

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Feeding Behavior (Ecology)

A solitary hunter, the big bull shark feeds on bony fishes, other sharks such as young sandbar sharks, rays, mantis shrimps, crabs, squid, sea snails, sea urchins, mammalian carrion, sea turtles, and, occasionally, garbage. This is definitely an opportunistic species!

Life History

Bull sharks are viviparous (live bearers), with a yolk-sac placenta, and give birth to 1-13 young per litter. Their size at birth is about 60-80 cm in length. In the western north Atlantic off Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, and off South Africa, the young are born in late spring or early summer. Off Nicaragua, females may have young throughout the year, with a peak in spring and early summer. The estimated gestation period is 10-11 months. Males reach sexual maturity between 1.6 and 2.3 m in length, females at 1.8 to 2.3 m, both between 15-20 years. Mating features distinct pairing with embrace; the male nips at the female's back and grasps one of her pectoral fins in his mouth. Females often have courtship scars.

Comments

Bull sharks are considered one of the most dangerous species of tropical shark; they've been implicated in a number of attacks on humans. They are fished commercially and sold fresh, fresh-frozen, or smoked for human consumption. They are also finned for shark fin soup. Their hides are sold for leather, their liver for oil, and their carcass for fishmeal.

According to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) at the Florida Museum of Natural History Ichthyology Department, here are some things you should do to avoid bull sharks:

Avoid swimming near river mouths or other estuaries with turbid waters where bull sharks are known to occur.
Do not swim near schools of fish in inshore areas. These schools are often pursued by large predators.
Be cautious if spearfishing. Bull sharks are known to approach spearfishermen carrying their catch.
Do not duplicate the practices of some television "adventurers" who flagrantly disregard common sense for showboating around sharks while underwater.

The bull shark, Charcarhinus leucas, is listed as Lower Risk/near threatened (LR/nt) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:

LOWER RISK (LR) - A taxon is Lower Risk when it has been evaluated, does not satisfy the criteria for any of the categories Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable. Taxa included in the Lower Risk category can be separated into three subcategories:

1. Conservation Dependent (cd). Taxa which are the focus of a continuing taxon-specific or habitat-specific conservation programme targeted towards the taxon in question, the cessation of which would result in the taxon qualifying for one of the threatened categories above within a period of five years.
2. Near Threatened (nt). Taxa which do not qualify for Conservation Dependent, but which are close to qualifying for Vulnerable.
3. Least Concern (lc). Taxa which do not qualify for Conservation Dependent or Near Threatened.

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References & Further Research

BioOne ~ CITES ~ Discover Life ~ GBIF ~ Google Scholar ~ ITIS ~ IUCN RedList ~ MarineBio Network ~ NCBI ~ SCIRIS ~ SIRIS ~ Tree of Life Web Project ~ Wikipedia

Bull Shark - Charcarhinus leucas - Florida Museum of Natural History
Australian Museum Fish Site

Search the Web for Bull Shark » ARKive ~ Ask.com ~ Ask Jeeves ~ bing ~ deviantART ~ dmoz ~ Dogpile ~ Google Images ~ MySpace Images ~ OceanFootage ~ Picsearch ~ StumbleUpon ~ Yahoo! Images ~ YouTube

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Citation: Carcharhinus leucas, Bull Shark - MarineBio.org. Retrieved , from .

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Carcharhinus leucas Bull Shark [+]