Brown-banded Bamboo Shark
Chiloscyllium punctatum
Brown-banded bamboo sharks aren’t particularly strong swimmers. But they make up for it with their ability to camouflage and hide in their shallow-water habitats. Babies have very striking bands that help them look like poisonous creatures — that helps them stay safe from predators.
They eat by sucking up their food along with a lot of water, called benthic suction feeding. They “spit” the water back out of their gills while the food stays in their mouths.
SPECIES IN DETAIL
Brown-banded Bamboo Shark
Chiloscyllium punctatum
CONSERVATION STATUS: Near threatened
CLIMATE CHANGE:
At the Aquarium
Shark Lagoon
Geographic Distribution
Coastal waters across the Indo-West Pacific, including India, Southeast Asian, Japan, southern New Guinea and northern Australia
Habitat
These sharks live in sandy, muddy areas in tide pools, seagrass beds, inshore coral reefs, and mangrove bays (like the one our bamboo sharks live in at Shark Lagoon).They usually live in very shallow waters, and have been documented as far down as 85 meters.
Physical Characteristics
These small sharks have cylindrical, relatively slender bodies. Their tails are a little longer than their head and trunk. They have very large spiracles behind and below their eyes, and their nostrils (right behind the tip of their rounded snout) have grooves and barbels.
As babies and juveniles, brown-banded bamboo sharks have very dark transverse bands from their head to the tip of their tails.These bands and patterns fade in adults, whose bands are light-to-dark brown with less contrast.
Size
Up to a little over one meter (3-4 feet).
Diet
Brown-banded bamboo sharks eat worms, small crustaceans, little fishes, and cephalopods.
These sharks are known as benthic suction feeders. In other words, they eat benthic animals (benthic meaning on or near the ocean floor) with a suction motion. They quickly suck water (and their meal) into their mouths. The water is expelled through their gills after they close their mouth.
Here at the Aquarium of the Pacific, our brown-banded bamboo sharks eat a diet of squid and shrimp.
Reproduction
Bamboo sharks are oviparous, which means they lay egg sacks that hatch outside of their bodies. In one year, just six female brown-banded bamboo sharks have been seen producing 692 eggs. (Here at the Aquarium of the Pacific, guests can usually see and even hold some of these eggs at Shark Lagoon because our female population produces so many.) These eggs are deposited on or near the sea floor, often attached with sticky tendrils so they don’t float away.
When fertilized, eggs can take between about 90 and 150 days to hatch.
Brown-banded bamboo sharks may be able to store sperm longer than any other species of shark, with a reported incident of a bamboo shark laying an egg after 45 months of storing sperm.
Most information on bamboo sharks’ reproduction is from observations in aquariums rather than out in the ocean.
Behavior
All sharks can sense electricity through special electroreceptors called the ampullae of Lorenzini. This helps them find food and also avoid predators since living creatures give off a type of electricity when their muscles move or heart beats.
Bamboo sharks have spiracles, which pump water over their gills so they don’t have to swim in order to breathe. This allows them to gather together to sleep in a cluster underneath rocks to stay safe during the day.
These sharks are nocturnal, waking to search for food at night.
Adaptation
Brown-banded bamboo sharks are a very resilient bunch. They live in coral reef flats and similarly shallow habitats. That makes them well-adapted to living in cyclical hypoxic conditions (that is, areas that regularly become low in oxygen).
They can also survive in areas with both too much and too little salt (partially euryhaline). In their habitats—like bays and sheltered coastal areas—a lot of water may evaporate, leaving behind a relatively high concentration of salt (hypersaline). At other times, like when the area floods, there will be much more water relative to the usual concentration of salt (hyposaline).
Brown-banded bamboo sharks can survive it all by changing the cells in their gills to filter out or hold onto salt as needed.
The brown bands of this shark aren’t just beautiful: they’re very useful, too. When a brown-banded bamboo shark hatches, it can be as small as 10 centimeters long (about four inches!). That leaves them very vulnerable to predators.
The good news for these baby sharks is that they have extremely high-contrast bands that are much more dramatic than the patterns seen in adults. These bands resemble poisonous and other unwise-to-mess-with creatures, like sea snakes. This adaptation is called Batesian mimicry, and it refers to patterns that make creatures appear more threatening than they are to keep them safe.
Longevity
While the upper estimated age of brown-banded bamboo sharks in the ocean is 14 years, these sharks can live up to 25 years in aquariums.
Conservation
Brown-banded bamboo sharks are near threatened, with the major threats to their populations coming from the overfishing and trawling of their habitats. It’s estimated that almost half of the brown-spotted bamboo sharks may be juveniles, which may pose a significant future threat to the species in the Indo-Pacific.
Some of these sharks’ habitats fall in protected zones in Australia, such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Moreton Bay Marine Park.
Special Notes
Some research suggests that even before they’re hatched, brown-banded bamboo sharks may be able to detect the electrical fields of potential predators. They may even be able to pause their respiratory gill movements so that they won’t be found as easily!
SPECIES IN DETAIL | Print full entry
Brown-banded Bamboo Shark
Chiloscyllium punctatum
CONSERVATION STATUS: Near threatened
CLIMATE CHANGE:
Shark Lagoon
Coastal waters across the Indo-West Pacific, including India, Southeast Asian, Japan, southern New Guinea and northern Australia
These sharks live in sandy, muddy areas in tide pools, seagrass beds, inshore coral reefs, and mangrove bays (like the one our bamboo sharks live in at Shark Lagoon).They usually live in very shallow waters, and have been documented as far down as 85 meters.
These small sharks have cylindrical, relatively slender bodies. Their tails are a little longer than their head and trunk. They have very large spiracles behind and below their eyes, and their nostrils (right behind the tip of their rounded snout) have grooves and barbels.
As babies and juveniles, brown-banded bamboo sharks have very dark transverse bands from their head to the tip of their tails.These bands and patterns fade in adults, whose bands are light-to-dark brown with less contrast.
Up to a little over one meter (3-4 feet).
Brown-banded bamboo sharks eat worms, small crustaceans, little fishes, and cephalopods.
These sharks are known as benthic suction feeders. In other words, they eat benthic animals (benthic meaning on or near the ocean floor) with a suction motion. They quickly suck water (and their meal) into their mouths. The water is expelled through their gills after they close their mouth.
Here at the Aquarium of the Pacific, our brown-banded bamboo sharks eat a diet of squid and shrimp.
Bamboo sharks are oviparous, which means they lay egg sacks that hatch outside of their bodies. In one year, just six female brown-banded bamboo sharks have been seen producing 692 eggs. (Here at the Aquarium of the Pacific, guests can usually see and even hold some of these eggs at Shark Lagoon because our female population produces so many.) These eggs are deposited on or near the sea floor, often attached with sticky tendrils so they don’t float away.
When fertilized, eggs can take between about 90 and 150 days to hatch.
Brown-banded bamboo sharks may be able to store sperm longer than any other species of shark, with a reported incident of a bamboo shark laying an egg after 45 months of storing sperm.
Most information on bamboo sharks’ reproduction is from observations in aquariums rather than out in the ocean.
All sharks can sense electricity through special electroreceptors called the ampullae of Lorenzini. This helps them find food and also avoid predators since living creatures give off a type of electricity when their muscles move or heart beats.
Bamboo sharks have spiracles, which pump water over their gills so they don’t have to swim in order to breathe. This allows them to gather together to sleep in a cluster underneath rocks to stay safe during the day.
These sharks are nocturnal, waking to search for food at night.
Brown-banded bamboo sharks are a very resilient bunch. They live in coral reef flats and similarly shallow habitats. That makes them well-adapted to living in cyclical hypoxic conditions (that is, areas that regularly become low in oxygen).
They can also survive in areas with both too much and too little salt (partially euryhaline). In their habitats—like bays and sheltered coastal areas—a lot of water may evaporate, leaving behind a relatively high concentration of salt (hypersaline). At other times, like when the area floods, there will be much more water relative to the usual concentration of salt (hyposaline).
Brown-banded bamboo sharks can survive it all by changing the cells in their gills to filter out or hold onto salt as needed.
The brown bands of this shark aren’t just beautiful: they’re very useful, too. When a brown-banded bamboo shark hatches, it can be as small as 10 centimeters long (about four inches!). That leaves them very vulnerable to predators.
The good news for these baby sharks is that they have extremely high-contrast bands that are much more dramatic than the patterns seen in adults. These bands resemble poisonous and other unwise-to-mess-with creatures, like sea snakes. This adaptation is called Batesian mimicry, and it refers to patterns that make creatures appear more threatening than they are to keep them safe.
While the upper estimated age of brown-banded bamboo sharks in the ocean is 14 years, these sharks can live up to 25 years in aquariums.
Brown-banded bamboo sharks are near threatened, with the major threats to their populations coming from the overfishing and trawling of their habitats. It’s estimated that almost half of the brown-spotted bamboo sharks may be juveniles, which may pose a significant future threat to the species in the Indo-Pacific.
Some of these sharks’ habitats fall in protected zones in Australia, such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Moreton Bay Marine Park.
Some research suggests that even before they’re hatched, brown-banded bamboo sharks may be able to detect the electrical fields of potential predators. They may even be able to pause their respiratory gill movements so that they won’t be found as easily!