Leopard Catshark

• Maximum length84 cm (33 in); males slightly larger than females
• WeightAbout 3 kg (7 lb) at most
• LifespanNot measured; estimated 15–20 years
• Depth rangeIntertidal to 20 m (65 ft) usual; recorded to 256 m (840 ft)
• DietSmall bony fish, chokka squid, octopus, rock lobster, polychaete worms
• IUCN statusLeast Concern (assessed 2019)

How to recognise a leopard catshark

Start with the shape, because the colour will mislead you. A leopard catshark is a slender catshark with a body that is slightly compressed from side to side and tapers evenly to a low, long tail with a barely developed lower lobe. The snout is short and blunt, the eyes are horizontal ovals with a ridge above them, and the mouth is a broad arch set under the snout with a pair of nasal barbels in front of it that reach back to the mouth, longer than in its only close relative, the pyjama shark. Both dorsal fins sit far back on the body, the first above the pelvic fins and the second above the anal fin, and the pectoral fins are broad.

Now the colour. The typical form carries dark brown rosettes and broken rings on a pale grey-brown background, like a leopard's coat. The marleyi form has large, solid, round black spots and was once described as a separate species; the salt-and-pepper form is dusted with fine dark speckles; and the melanistic form is almost entirely black on top with faint stripes and spots showing through. Most individuals fall between these, juveniles have larger, blacker spots, and the big-spotted and speckled forms are commoner in the east.

The teeth are small, three-cusped and arranged in roughly 18 to 30 rows in the upper jaw and 13 to 26 in the lower.

How big is a leopard catshark?

The leopard catshark reaches 84 cm (33 in), and it is one of the few sharks in which the males run slightly larger than the females: males mature at about 48 to 66 cm and females at 44 to 64 cm, so both sexes breed at well under full size, which is unusual for a catshark. A big male of 80 cm is a rare animal; most adults met by divers are 55 to 70 cm.

Weight has seldom been recorded. The heaviest published figure is a little over 3 kg (7 lb), and a typical 65 cm adult weighs perhaps 1.5 kg; a slender catshark of this length is a light fish. The size bar below draws the maximum length against a diver.

Hatchlings are about 11 cm long and already carry a juvenile pattern of large black spots. The old version of this page stated that the species matures at about ten years and lives 15 to 19 years; neither number has been measured, and both are guesses extrapolated from other catsharks. Growth rates, age at maturity and longevity for Poroderma pantherinum remain to be worked out.

Where leopard catsharks live

The leopard catshark is a South African endemic. Its range runs from Saldanha Bay on the cold west coast, around the Cape Peninsula and False Bay, along the whole south coast and up the east coast as far as the Tugela River mouth in KwaZulu-Natal, a stretch of roughly 2,000 km that takes in three very different water masses, from 12 °C Benguela upwelling in the west to 24 °C subtropical water in the east. Old reports from Madagascar are unverified.

It lives on the bottom in shallow water. Kelp forests, rocky reefs and gullies, and sandy flats next to reefs are its habitat, from the intertidal zone, where anglers hook it from the rocks, down to about 20 m, where most divers see it. There are trawl records to 256 m (840 ft), so the species can and does use the outer shelf, but the population that matters is inshore. By day it lies in caves and under ledges, often in the same cave for weeks.

Nothing suggests migration. Like the shysharks and its cousin the pyjama shark, the leopard catshark is a stay-at-home species that patrols a small home reef, and a diver who learns an individual's pattern can find it on the same reef months later.

What leopard catsharks eat and the squid season

The diet is mostly small bony fish, with cephalopods second, then crustaceans, including juvenile Cape rock lobster, and polychaete worms. The shark forages at night along the reef and over sand, using the barbels and the electroreceptive pores of its snout, the ampullae of Lorenzini, to find prey it cannot see, and swallows small fish whole. Octopus and cuttlefish are dealt with by seizing an arm and twisting the body to tear it off, which disables the animal before the shark takes the rest.

The one time it hunts by daylight is the chokka squid spawning season. From spring into summer, chokka (Loligo reynaudii) gather in their thousands over sand in the bays of the Eastern Cape to lay egg beds, and leopard catsharks lie among the egg strands waiting for a female squid to descend and attach her capsule, then lunge. The squid are fast in open water and almost helpless in that moment, and the sharks feed until they can hold no more.

The catshark is prey in turn. The broadnose sevengill shark hunts the same kelp reefs and takes leopard catsharks, and Cape fur seals and large bony fish take juveniles, which is why a cornered leopard catshark curls into a ring with its tail over its head. More on the predators of sharks is on our what eats sharks page.

Behaviour and senses

A leopard catshark's day is spent hidden. It lies in caves, crevices and under overhangs, alone or with a pyjama shark or two, and pays little attention to divers; on a night dive the same animal is out on the reef, cruising with a slow, sinuous stroke a few centimetres above the bottom with its barbels brushing the sand. The switch to daytime activity during the squid spawning shows that the nocturnal habit is a choice about food, not a fixed rhythm.

The senses are those of a bottom hunter. The barbels are tactile and chemosensory, the electroreceptors detect the muscle activity of buried prey, and the horizontal oval eyes work well in the dim light of a reef at night. Smell brings the shark to bait from a distance.

The pattern raises a question nobody has answered: why one species should carry four such different colour forms, and why the forms should be distributed unevenly along the coast. Camouflage against different backgrounds, from kelp-shaded Cape reefs to the brighter reefs of the east, is the usual suggestion; the melanistic animals may simply be a common mutation that the species tolerates because its predators hunt by smell and electric sense, not by sight. Socially, the species shows no structure beyond the loose daytime sharing of caves.

Reproduction and lifespan

Leopard catsharks are oviparous. Mating has been observed in aquariums: the male bites the female's pectoral fin and flank and wraps his body around hers to insert a clasper, the usual catshark method. The female then lays two eggs at a time, one from each oviduct, in tough rectangular capsules with a tendril at each corner that she winds around sea fans, kelp holdfasts or sponges so that the case hangs in the current. Laying continues through much of the year.

The embryo feeds on its yolk for a period that has not been measured in the wild; eggs of the related pyjama shark take around five to six months in Cape aquariums, and leopard catshark eggs are thought to be similar. The pup hatches at about 11 cm, fully independent.

Maturity comes at 48 to 66 cm for males and 44 to 64 cm for females, but the age at which that happens is unknown, because no vertebral ageing has been published for the species; the figure of ten years that circulates is an assumption. Lifespan is likewise unmeasured, and the 15 to 19 years quoted in older sources should be read as an estimate for a catshark of this size rather than a fact. Our page on how long sharks live explains how such ages are established.

Is the leopard catshark dangerous?

No. The SharkSider database attributes no incident to the leopard catshark, and there is nothing in the animal that could produce one: it is under a metre long, slim, small-mouthed and equipped with teeth designed for anchovies and squid. Anglers on the Cape and Eastern Cape shores unhook them by hand, divers photograph them at arm's length by day and night, and aquarists handle them daily. When cornered it curls into a ring, and that is the whole of its defence.

The South African sharks with a bite record are a different set of animals, and their incidents are on our South Africa shark attack page: the great white along the Cape coast, and the bull and tiger sharks off KwaZulu-Natal. In an encounter with a leopard catshark the only creature at risk is the shark, and the right thing to do with a hooked one is to wet your hands, take the hook out fast and put it back on the reef.

The SharkSider database has no incident attributed to this species. The database draws on the International Shark Attack File, the Global Shark Attack File and verified local reports, and is updated weekly.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List assesses the leopard catshark as Least Concern, with the current assessment from 2019. Within its range it is common, in places abundant, and there is no evidence of decline. That is a happier picture than for its neighbours the brown and Natal shysharks, both Vulnerable, and the difference lies in range: the leopard catshark occupies the whole South African coast from the west coast to KwaZulu-Natal and across three water masses, so no single fishery, harbour or heatwave can reach all of it at once.

It is not fished commercially. The species is taken as bycatch in inshore trawls and by shore and boat anglers, who dislike it for stripping bait and often kill it rather than release it, and that is the main human cause of death. It is not listed by CITES or by the Convention on Migratory Species and has no specific legal protection, but South Africa's marine protected areas, from the Table Mountain National Park marine section to Tsitsikamma and the Eastern Cape reserves, include a great deal of leopard catshark reef.

It is also one of the most widely kept South African sharks in public aquariums, prized for its pattern and its calm temperament, and it breeds in captivity; there is more on that side of the trade on our sharks in captivity page. For the moment it is what a healthy endemic shark looks like.

Similar species and close relatives

The leopard catshark has only one sister species, the pyjama shark, with which it makes up the genus Poroderma. The pyjama shark grows larger, to about 1 m, has a stouter body and shorter nasal barbels that stop short of the mouth, and is unmistakable in its seven dark stripes running the length of the body. The two share reefs, caves and the squid spawning grounds.

The four shysharks of the genus Haploblepharus, the puffadder, brown, dark and Natal shysharks, are the other catsharks of the same shallows. All are smaller and stouter, with broad flattened heads and enlarged nasal flaps fused into a single lobe instead of separate barbels, and none carries rosettes. Beyond South Africa, the closest ecological equivalents are the small-spotted catshark and the nursehound of European coasts, which fill the same night-foraging, egg-laying niche on rocky ground.

Two names to keep apart: the leopard shark of California is a houndshark with saddles, not a catshark, and the zebra shark of the Indo-Pacific is called the leopard shark in Australia. Neither is related to this species; all three simply reminded someone of a leopard.

• Pyjama Sharkspecies profile
• Puffadder Shysharkspecies profile
• Brown Shysharkspecies profile
• Natal Shysharkspecies profile
• Small-Spotted Catsharkspecies profile
• Nursehound Sharkspecies profile

Written and reviewed by

SharkSider Editorial Team

A small team focused on researching sharks and making marine biology easy to understand. Every page is reviewed against current species records and the SharkSider attack database, and updated when new incidents or research appear.

Published September 9, 2022 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · No incident attributed to this species in the SharkSider attack database, which is updated weekly.