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Range and Habitat: A common inshore bottom shark found on tropical coral reefs in the Indo-West Pacific. India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Viet Nam, China, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. They commonly occur in the intertidal, in tide pools on rocky or coral reefs close inshore, sometimes in water sufficient only to cover them.
Description: The maximum total length is about 104 cm (41 inches, 3.5 feet). Females are often larger than males. The mouth is well in front of the eyes with a greatly elongated, thick precaudal tail. Brownbanded bamboo sharks are light brown in adults, usually without a color pattern, but young have dark transverse spots and usually a scattering of small blackish spots. Gill slits small, with the fifth overlapping the fourth.
Habits and Adaptations: The teeth are not strongly different in the jaw. Most are small and molar like throughout the mouth. Their slender bodies and strong, muscular, leg-like paired pectoral fins are ideal for clambering on reefs and in crevices. Movement of these sharks in their habitat is most likely dictated by food source. Most of their activity occurs during the day.
Diet: Food for these sharks is little known, but probably includes small bony fishes and invertebrates.
Breeding and Maturation: Reproductive habits of these sharks aren’t well known. In captivity males tend to search out females during breeding season. They are oviparous. The rounded egg cases are deposited on the ocean floor near their habitat. Lifespan is unknown.
Miscellaneous: Very tenacious of life, can survive out of water for a long period of time, up to one-half day. Regularly taken in inshore fisheries in India and Thailand and utilized for human food. These are common, small, harmless inshore sharks of continental waters of the tropical western Pacific. Large sharks and fish as well as humans are predators of this shark.
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