Studies of stomach contents and chemical markers both indicated that the tiger shark is a generalist feeder at the population level, and stomach contents from 628 tiger sharks off South Africa showed that reptiles, birds and large sharks became more important in the diet as the sharks grew. In the Galapagos, green sea turtles were the main prey of large tiger sharks over 280 centimeters, and their food includes sea turtles and birds. They are scavengers as well as hunters, and they hunt mostly at night, when they often move into shallow water to feed. A tiger shark's large teeth have curved tips and serrated, saw-like edges, and each tooth has a deep notch on its outer edge. A tiger shark has 18 to 26 rows of teeth in its upper jaw and 18 to 25 in its lower jaw.

Split bands and narrow bands in tiger shark vertebrae can make ages come out too low, and to age tiger sharks off eastern Australia, scientists counted growth bands in 202 thin sections of vertebrae from 112 females. In the wild, the average lifespan of a tiger shark is 27 years, though some may live to 50. A tiger shark matures at about 7 to 10 years old, when it is about 10 feet long. An adult tiger shark is commonly 325 to 425 centimeters (10 to 14 feet) long, and as of November 2026 some have been recorded at 550 centimeters (18 feet) long.

A 2021 study of fossil and living tiger shark teeth supports only six valid species, but many fossil tiger shark species remain doubtful, so the evolutionary history of tiger sharks is unresolved. Genetic modelling puts the split between Indo-Pacific and Atlantic tiger shark populations at about 193,000 years ago, and DNA from tiger sharks collected in eastern Australia over a century showed a significant change in genetic makeup between sharks born around 1939 and those born in 2015. Genetic evidence from 286 tiger sharks points to an event 2,000 to 3,000 years ago that left low genetic diversity. Scientists found five genes in the tiger shark lineage with a signature of positive selection, and in a genetic study of pups from four pregnant tiger sharks, the sharks sampled appeared to be genetically monogamous.

A mother tiger shark gives birth to live young, called pups, and unlike the other live-bearing sharks in its family, the tiger shark does not develop a placenta. A tiger shark pup weighs 3 to 6 kilograms at birth and is about 51 to 76 centimeters (1 to 1.5 feet) long. A female carries her pups for a year or more, up to about 16 months, before they are born, and she can give birth to 10 to 82 pups at one time. A new intrauterine satellite tag, tested in a tiger shark and a scalloped hammerhead, remotely recorded the location and timing of birth. Researchers in Hawaii found the first evidence of potential seasonal mating aggregations in tiger sharks, a behavior not documented before in this mostly solitary species, and in the Northern Hemisphere tiger sharks mate between March and May.

Of eight tiger sharks tracked by satellite from Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, one traveled east to the African continent, and as of January 2023, a review of South Atlantic tiger shark research found 41 scientific publications, with Northeastern Brazil the most studied area. One tiger shark tracked off Western Australia traveled over 4,000 kilometers during 517 days of monitoring, and core home ranges of tiger sharks tagged off Western Australia varied greatly, from 1,166.9 to 634,944 square kilometers. In the Bahamas, acoustic tags on 39 tiger sharks showed that sub-adult females 225 to 250 cm long moved more widely than juvenile and mature sharks, and adult male tiger sharks tracked in the northwest Atlantic made round-trip migrations of over 7,500 kilometers every year.

Tiger sharks migrate with the seasons, moving into temperate waters from the tropics in warmer months and returning to the tropics in winter. Tiger sharks are found in many subtropical and tropical waters, mainly between 45 degrees north and 32 degrees south, and they have been confirmed as far north as Iceland and the United Kingdom. Tiger sharks tracked in the western North Atlantic typically stayed within a narrow daily temperature range of about 2 degrees Celsius, and from 2010 to 2019 they migrated farther north, and earlier in the year, when sea-surface temperatures were unusually high. As of November 2026, scientists predict the tiger shark's range off eastern Australia will extend about 3.5 degrees south, toward Tasmania.

Words to know

• generalist: eats many foods
• vertebrae: backbone parts
• aggregations: gatherings
• selection: favored change
• placenta: womb food link
• monogamous: one mate