Reaching only about 4 feet long, horn sharks are smaller than other shark species and have tan or beige skin with spots to help with camouflage. Their name comes from the unique protrusions on their back that resemble horns and serve as a defense mechanism against predators including other sharks, elephant seals and some large fish.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Frable chuckled as he recalled a ZooBooks commercial from the 1990s that featured a video of an angel shark biting down on one of those protrusions and immediately spitting out the horn shark.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Horn sharks additionally \u201chave these eyebrows and eyes on their head that allows them to have more range of view for predators, and they can even hide in the sand, so the eyes allow them to obscure their body while looking around,\u201d Frable said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey also have a unique mouth and jaw structure because their jaws are modified to crush hard-shelled invertebrates like crabs or mollusks, and its mouth is on the bottom of its head instead of in front. So instead of having big ferocious teeth, the teeth are smaller and designed for crushing shells.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Horn sharks occasionally will enter tide pools to eat the creatures there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though there has never been commercial fishing of horn sharks, remains have been found at Indigenous sites, suggesting that humans once ate them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most unique thing about the horn shark is its eggs, which regularly wash to shore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Horn](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ljl-l-horn-shark-egg.jpg\")
Horn shark egg casings are corkscrew-shaped and often wash to shore. (Charlotte Seid)<\/p>\n
\u201cAll sharks have internal fertilization, like humans, where it happens inside the female\u2019s body,\u201d Frable said. \u201cOther fish will release genetic material into the water as a method of reproduction. Some sharks give live birth, others will keep the egg in their body and the egg hatches inside the body. <\/p>\n
\u201cHorn sharks lay eggs. After mating, the female will have a fertilized egg and will deposit it in a rocky reef area. The eggs are unique among sharks because they have a corkscrew shape. Other shark eggs have a flat shape with tassels, and people tend to find them and call them mermaid purses. That\u2019s the more common shape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Horn shark eggs are believed to be corkscrew-shaped so they can be wedged between rocks, protected from predators, until they hatch.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the baby develops in the egg case, and when it is ready to hatch, it chews its way out like a baby bird pecking on its egg shell,\u201d Frable said. \u201cOnce they are out of the egg case, the egg case will float away and can wash up on beaches.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beach-goers find them \u201cpretty regularly\u201d and email Scripps Oceanography asking what they are, he said. <\/p>\n
Mating season is February to April, and females will lay one or two eggs per day intermittently during that period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t known exactly how long horn sharks typically live, but an unverified record states they can live up to 25 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The horn shark is known to stay in one geographic area its whole life, including most of Southern California and Baja, Frable said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is one of our many local shallow-water fish, and we\u2019re really lucky that you can see a lot of them while snorkeling,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t do that in a lot of the world.\u201d \u2666 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re all familiar with La Jolla\u2019s sea lions, harbor seals, orcas, garibaldi and seabirds. But in this series…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":207885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3548,7354,19284,27684,3549,3550,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-207884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-la-jolla","12":"tag-la-jolla-light","13":"tag-la-jolla-light-news","14":"tag-la-jolla-shores","15":"tag-san-diego","16":"tag-san-diego-county","17":"tag-sandiego","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115163639589701995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}