Smoothtooth blacktip shark facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Smoothtooth blacktip shark |
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| Conservation status | |
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Carcharhinus
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| Species: |
leiodon
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| Range of the smoothtooth blacktip shark | |
The smoothtooth blacktip shark (Carcharhinus leiodon) is a type of shark. It belongs to a group of sharks called requiem sharks. This shark has only been found in two main places. One is the Gulf of Aden near Yemen. The other is the Persian Gulf near Kuwait.
It can grow up to about 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) long. This shark has a strong, greenish body. It has a short nose and fins with black tips. You can tell it apart from similar sharks by its teeth. Its teeth are narrow, stand straight up, and have smooth edges.
We don't know much about the life of the smoothtooth blacktip shark. It probably lives in shallow waters. It likely eats small bony fishes. Like other sharks in its family, it probably gives birth to live young. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says this shark is endangered. This means it is at high risk of disappearing. Even though more sharks have been found, its future is still uncertain. This is because of a lot of fishing and damage to its habitat.
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Discovering the Smoothtooth Blacktip Shark
The first smoothtooth blacktip shark was found in 1902. It was a young male shark, about 75 cm (2.5 feet) long. A person named Wilhelm Hein caught it. This shark was then kept at a museum in Vienna. The shark was caught near "Gischin" in the Gulf of Aden. This place is probably the town of Qishn in eastern Yemen.
In 1985, a shark expert named Jack Garrick studied this shark. He said it was a new species. He named it leiodon. This name comes from ancient Greek words. Leios means "smooth" and odon means "tooth". For a long time, this was the only known smoothtooth blacktip shark. But in 2008, more sharks were found. They were discovered during fishery surveys in Kuwait.
What Does This Shark Look Like?
The smoothtooth blacktip shark looks a lot like the blacktip reef shark. It has a strong body and a short, blunt nose. Its nostrils have small, triangle-shaped skin flaps. Its eyes are small and round. They have special eyelids called nictitating membranes.
The shark's mouth is wide and curved. It has very short grooves at the corners. It has 16 rows of teeth on each side of its upper jaw. It has 14 or 15 rows on each side of its lower jaw. There are also a few small teeth in the middle of each jaw. Its teeth are special because they are narrow and stand straight up. They also have no jagged edges. Only a few other sharks have teeth like this. The shark also has five long gill slits on each side.
Its pectoral fins are long and pointed. They are slightly curved like a sickle. The first dorsal fin is medium-sized and triangular. It starts above the back of the pectoral fins. The second dorsal fin is small. It is located across from the anal fin. There is no ridge of skin between the two dorsal fins. The pelvic fins are triangular and bigger than the anal fin. The anal fin has a deep notch on its back edge.
The shark's tail base has a crescent-shaped notch. The caudal fin (tail fin) is not even. It has a well-developed lower part. The upper part is longer and has a notch near its tip. The shark's skin is covered in tiny, overlapping scales called dermal denticles. These scales have three or five small teeth.
The shark is greenish-yellow or greenish-gray on top. It sometimes has tiny dark dots. Its underside is white. This white color extends in a pale band onto its sides. All of its fins have clear black tips. A wide, dark stripe runs down its back. This stripe goes from the second dorsal fin to the tip of the upper tail fin. The biggest smoothtooth blacktip shark ever found was 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) long.
Where Do Smoothtooth Blacktip Sharks Live?
The smoothtooth blacktip shark has only been found in eastern Yemen and Kuwait. These two places are about 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) apart. They are also very different. The Gulf of Aden near Yemen is very deep. It has a narrow continental shelf. No big rivers flow into it.
But the Persian Gulf near Kuwait is much shallower. It is less than 40 meters (130 feet) deep. It also gets a lot of fresh water from rivers like the Tigris and Euphrates. The sharks found in Kuwait were from fish markets. Fishermen in Kuwait use fast boats. This suggests the shark lives in shallow, coastal waters. These waters can include many different places. They can be estuaries (where rivers meet the sea) or coral reefs. So, we still don't know exactly what kind of habitat this shark prefers.
Life and Habits
The smoothtooth blacktip shark looks like the blacktip reef shark. This means it might play a similar role in its shallow-water environment. We know it eats marine catfish. It probably also eats other small bony fishes.
Like all other sharks in its family, this species likely gives birth to live young. The baby sharks grow inside the mother. They get food from her through a special connection called a placenta. Male sharks become ready to have babies when they are between 0.9 and 1.2 meters (3 to 3.9 feet) long.
Why This Shark Needs Our Help
Before more sharks were found in Kuwait, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said the smoothtooth blacktip shark was Endangered. This was because people thought there were very few of them. Even though a second group was found near Kuwait, this shark is still likely endangered.
The waters around the Arabian Peninsula have a lot of fishing. They also suffer from habitat degradation. This means their homes are being damaged. Gillnets and other fishing methods in Kuwait sometimes catch this shark by accident. There are also many shark fisheries in Yemen and Somalia. We don't know how the group of sharks near Yemen is doing. No sharks have been seen there since the first one over a hundred years ago.
