Zebra Shark

ocean · sharks · amazing transformations

Striped babies, spotted adults. Baby zebra sharks are brown with white vertical stripes, but as they grow, they lose the stripes and develop a pale background covered in dark spots instead, like they're wearing a completely different outfit.

Lives in tropical reefs. These sharks make their home throughout the Indo-Pacific ocean, hanging out around coral reefs and sandy bottoms where the water is warm and tropical.

Built for the bottom. Zebra sharks have a body shape that helps them live near the ocean floor, with five ridges running along their sides and a tail that makes up almost half their total length.

Grows to 8 feet long. These sharks reach about 2.5 meters, or roughly the height of a tall adult human, making them medium-sized sharks compared to great whites.

Unique transformation period. Young zebra sharks under 50 to 90 centimeters long look so different from adults that people might not recognize them as the same species if they didn't watch them grow.