Whitetip reef shark
Amazing fact
Whitetip reef sharks can pump water over their gills without swimming forward.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
Whitetip reef sharks can pump water over their gills without swimming forward.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Whitetip reef shark
- Scientific name
- Triaenodon obesus
- Japanese name
- ネムリブカ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Class
- Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Carcharhiniformes
- Family
- Carcharhinidae
- Genus
- Triaenodon
A shark of southern seas, found from the Ogasawara and Ryukyu Islands across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
It has a calm nature, and during the day it often rests in rocky holes or under corals.
How the Whitetip reef shark lives
They do most of their hunting and traveling at night. While chasing fish, they sometimes push the front of their body into cracks in the reef. Their mouth on the underside of the head also picks up crabs and octopuses from the seabed. They return to the same cave again and again.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity WebBasic data
- Range
- Ogasawara Islands, Ryukyu Islands, and Indo-Pacific
Where the Whitetip reef shark has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- ネムリブカ
- 简体中文
- 灰三齿鲨
- 繁體中文
- 灰三齒鯊
- 한국어
- 백기흉상어
- Français
- Requin-corail
- Deutsch
- Weißspitzen-Riffhai
- Português (Brasil)
- Tubarão-de-pontas-brancas-de-recife
- Italiano
- Squalo pinna bianca del reef
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Hiu karang
- Русский
- Рифовая акула
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — ネムリブカChecked: 2026-11-04
- University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web — Triaenodon obesusChecked: 2026-11-06
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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