Epaulette shark
Hemiscyllium ocellatum
Size, compared with you
You: 1.7 m. Epaulette shark: 1.1 m.
Person-sized. Grows up to about 1.1 m.
A small, slender reef shark from northern Australia and New Guinea with a big dark spot behind each gill, like a soldier's shoulder badge.
The weird bit
It walks. An epaulette shark wriggles along the seabed on its paired fins, and it can even crawl from one tide pool to the next.
Quick facts
- Where it lives
- Coral reef, Coast and shallows0 to 50 m down
- What it eats
- Worms, crabs, shrimp, small bottom-dwelling invertebrates and small fish
- How worried are we?
- Doing okay (Least Concern)Assessed in 2015 by the IUCN Red List.