Big fan of carpet sharks, especially Zebra Sharks :)
Carpet sharks are so fun tbh, so like, 10/10 for being a fan of them but especially for liking Zebra sharks most! They're so.... OwO looking. Like, that's literally the only way I can describe them lol.
I mean, look at their adorable little faces!
Anyway! To be Serious™ now because I'm a grown-up and grown-ups are serious... apparently-
Zebra sharks are the last surviving member of an entire shark family within the larger species of carpet shark. The Stegostomatidae family (the other member being the extinct Stegostoma Tethysiensis btw). Zebra sharks have the fancy Latin name of Stegostoma Tigrinum (Steg-o-stoma Tig-ri-num).
You can come across Zebra sharks throughout the tropics of the Indo-Pacific region, especially around coral reefs and sandy flat plains about 200 feet below sea level (62 metres).
The fun thing about Zebra sharks is they're actually kinda... well, not unique in their design but definitely pretty distinctive and easy to tell apart from other sharks that you'll find in the same geographic region.
They're kind of... rotund but like a cylinder instead of a ball. Their caudal fin (aka their tail) is low compared to other shark species and actually kind of accounts for about half their total body length. Actually, the way the caudal tail looks on a Zebra shark isn't too dissimilar to how the caudal tail of a Thresher shark looks! The difference is that the Zebra shark's caudal tail doesn't really have any height to it compared to that of the Thresher shark.
The Thresher shark just has a much, much longer caudal tail because that's what they use to hunt by whipping that bad boy and stunning (or outright killing) their prey.
Thresher shark caudal tail
The difference between the caudal fins of the Thresher shark and the Zebra shark is, essentially, that the Thresher shark's caudal fin has height to it whereas the Zebra shark's remains essentially the same height as the rest of its body.
Another neat thing about Zebra sharks is that they're nocturnal. They also are one of several shark species that can remain motionless without drowning which is cool (Great White could never lol). They don't really eat anything that big so they're not a danger to humans either; mainly molluscs, small bony fish, and crustaceans.
Unfortunately, the World Conservation Union has rated Zebra sharks as ENDANGERED because Zebra sharks are used for their meat, fins, and liver oil by fisheries across most of their geographic range. Except Australia actually because of their Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999. The EPBC protects several species of shark including the; Shortfin Mako; the Porbeagle; the Great White as well as many others.
What is kind of good at least is that, even though Zebra sharks are listed as Endangered currently, there's been some conservation work to try and increase their numbers in areas where they have declined due to over-fishing. One example is the StAR Project. The StAR project essentially is about trying to 'rewild' sharks into regions where their numbers have declined. With the Zebra shark, this is being done in the waters of the Indonesian Raja Ampat islands. With 19 countries working together on this project, it's kind of amazing.
The Sydney Sea Life Aquarium is part of a breeding project where, once the eggs are confirmed to have live embryos in them, are flown to Raja Ampat and placed into hatcheries so they can acclimatise to where they will (hopefully) hatch and become part of the biome. It's honestly amazing and I really recommend reading the news article about it here.
And speaking of young Zebra sharks, did you know that Zebra sharks typically grow to about 8 feet in length (8.2ft actually which is about 2.5m)?
Adult Zebra sharks have quite a distinctive coat pattern as well. In Australia they're also called Leopard sharks because of their light colouring with black spots.
Baby Zebra sharks however look completely different!
Up until they're about a metre in length (approx 3ft), Zebra sharks are brown with light vertical stripes and also lack the distinctive five length-wise ridges that adult Zebra sharks have down the length of their bodies.
