Scientific name:
Orectolobidae

Natural spread:
coast-regions of warm seas

wetnurse-sharks resembles the current idea of sharks quite little: Removes far from it to be bold hunters of the open sea with streamlined outlines and fashionable movements, some look virtually bizarre, with odd häutigen appendages at the head and colorfully patterned body. they live in the coast-regions of warm seas where they like to lie hidden on the ground or between rocks. They properly seem on that occasion to be place-scatters. It is inert fish, not aggressively, some almost trustful. However, Jean-Jacques Cousteau now and then tells it about wetnurse-sharks, who took meat-pieces from divers from the hand, itself from other small sharks, who were nimbler, had to have snatched away. Also the name "Wetnurse-shark" should come from from its "good-natured character." However, this doesn't prevent these sharks from also biting sensitively, if attacked it itself feels, Z. B. if bathers step on it.

Types They admittedly are not among the reams of the shark-order, after all however the Atlantic wetnurse-shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) becomes big at the 4 m well. This type is almost circle-round in the cross-section, the long tail is bent hardly upward in the end. The adult animals are virtually monochrome brownish or dun while the young-fish are usually still black spotted.

The Australian Wobbegong (Orectolobus); the biggest type. O. maculatus becomes approximately 3 m long, is one rather wide, flattened fish, that hardly attracts attention in its surroundings with its spot or cloud-drawing and the fringes standing about the mouth and lurks on its loot, that usually consists of smaller ground-animals. There are Orectolobus-Arten also at the Chinese and Japanese coasts. Bridge-East-grandma tigrinum (until over 2 m), a peaceful mussel and cancer-glutton, lives in the Indopazifik. The boys roved while the adult animals carry a dark stain-drawing.