Zebra shark
Amazing fact
A zebra shark can breathe without swimming by pumping water from its mouth across its gills.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
A zebra shark can breathe without swimming by pumping water from its mouth across its gills.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Zebra shark
- Scientific name
- Stegostoma tigrinum
- Japanese name
- トラフザメ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Class
- Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Orectolobiformes
- Family
- Stegostomatidae
- Genus
- Stegostoma
A shark of the Indian and Pacific Oceans that lives around coral reefs and sandy seafloors.
Young zebra sharks are black with white stripes, which gave the shark its name. Adults are yellow with black spots.
By day it swims lazily around the reef; at night it goes hunting.
How the Zebra shark lives
It eats mollusks, as well as crabs, shrimp and small fish. It swims powerfully with a tail as long as its body or longer. It usually lives alone. It reproduces by laying eggs.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web沖縄美ら海水族館Basic data
- Size
- 2–3.5 m
- Lifespan
- up to 33 years in the wild, 5–27 years in captivity
- Active
- At night (nocturnal)
- Diet
- Gastropods, bivalves, crabs, shrimp, and small fish
- Range
- Central and western Pacific and Indian Oceans
- Conservation status in Japan
- Data Deficient (DD)Assessed as Stegostoma fasciatumMinistry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)
Where the Zebra 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
- トラフザメ
- 简体中文
- 豹纹鲨
- 繁體中文
- 豹紋鯊
- Español
- Tiburón cebra
- Français
- Requin zèbre
- Deutsch
- Zebrahai
- Português (Brasil)
- Tubarão-zebra
- Italiano
- Squalo zebra
- العربية
- قرش مخطط
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Cucut tekeh
- Русский
- Зебровая 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
- University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web — Stegostoma fasciatumChecked: 2026-11-03
- 沖縄美ら海水族館 — トラフザメChecked: 2026-11-03
- 海遊館 — トラフザメChecked: 2026-11-03
- Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Marine Red List (2017)Checked: 2026-11-07
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.
The conservation status in Japan is the category in the Red Lists of the Ministry of the Environment of Japan, which assess the risk of extinction for wild animals in Japan.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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