In Australia, one 11-foot tiger shark was found with an entire horse's head, intact, inside its stomach. Although horses' heads are not a staple of the tiger shark's diet, the creatures do have wide-ranging tastes. Smaller sharks eat mostly fish, along with birds, but as tiger sharks grow larger their diet switches to dolphins, other sharks and rays. Tiger sharks also go after seemingly inedible prey such as puffer fish, stingrays, triggerfish and sea snakes. Researchers aren't sure how the sharks survive the barbs, bites and stings of these prickly prey.
Tiger sharks have a variety of sensors for locating prey.
Like other sharks, they have a line of vibration detectors located along their sides that enable them to pick up the pressure waves of a moving animal. The sharks also use special organs below the skin of their snouts that allow them to detect faint electrical fields generated by living creatures. Sometimes the sharks pick up the electrical fields generated by motors and mistake them for prey, however. Bill Gilmartin, a federal government biologist who studied Hawaiian monk seals, reported a 12-foot tiger shark that burst out of the water behind his boat and engulfed the propeller with its jaws, lifting the entire craft. Holland's crew got used to tiger sharks banging up against its boat.