The Burmese bamboo shark, ''Chiloscyllium burmensis'', is an extremely rare
bamboo shark
The Hemiscylliidae are a family (biology), family of sharks in the order Orectolobiformes, commonly known as longtail carpet sharks and sometimes as bamboo sharks. They are found in shallow waters of the tropical Indo-Pacific.
They are relativ ...
in the
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
Hemiscylliidae. The first specimen was caught in 1963 off the coast from
Rangoon
Yangon, formerly romanized as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar. Yangon was the List of capitals of Myanmar, capital of Myanmar until 2005 and served as such until 2006, when the State Peace and Dev ...
in
Myanmar
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...
(known as Burma at the time) in a depth of 29 – 33 m. This
holotype
A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...
is an adult male, 57 cm long and kept in the
National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 ...
, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Later, three more specimens, two males and one female, were recorded in 2018 from the Bangladesh Fisheries Development Corporation Fish Landing Center of Cox’s Bazar.
[ Ahmed, M.S., Chowdhury, N.Z., Datta, S.K. et al. New Geographical Record of the Burmese Bamboo Shark, Chiloscyllium burmensis (Orectolobiformes: Hemiscylliidae), from Bangladesh Waters. Thalassas 35, 347–350 (2019). ]
Description
The dorsal fin of the Burmese bamboo shark has straight rear margins. They are relatively small in size and have a slender body, blunt snout, and small eyes.
It has no particular color pattern.
Diet
They eat small bony fish or invertebrates.
[Compagno, Leonard. ''Sharks of the World''. Shark Research Center Iziko-Museums of Cape Town. No. 1. Vol 2. Cape Town South Africa: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2002. Pg 169.]
Reproduction
The Burmese bamboo shark is
oviparous
Oviparous animals are animals that reproduce by depositing fertilized zygotes outside the body (i.e., by laying or spawning) in metabolically independent incubation organs known as eggs, which nurture the embryo into moving offsprings kno ...
(egg laying), notedly laying eggs in pairs.
See also
*
List of sharks
Shark is the naming term of all members of Selachimorpha suborder in the subclass Elasmobranchii, in the class Chondrichthyes. The Elasmobranchii also include rays and skates; the Chondrichthyes also include Chimaeras. The first shark-like chond ...
References
*
*
Compagno, Dando, & Fowler, ''Sharks of the World'', Princeton University Press, New Jersey 2005
{{DEFAULTSORT:shark, bamboo, Burmese
Burmese bamboo shark
Fish of Myanmar
Endemic fauna of Myanmar
Burmese bamboo shark