Humpback smooth-hound Humpback smooth-hound The humpback smooth-hound ("Mustelus whitneyi") is a houndshark of the family Triakidae. It is found on the continental shelves of the tropical southeast Pacific, from Peru to southern Chile, between latitudes 3° S and 54° S, at depths between . Its conservation status is considered to be "vulnerable" by the IUCN. The humpback smooth-hound is a small shark growing to a length of up to . It has a sturdy body with a moderately long, broad, sharply angled snout and large eyes, set widely apart. The mouth is fairly long and the upper lip furrows are longer than
Slender smooth-hound in size. The diet of the slender smooth-hound is diverse, but dominated by small, benthic bony fishes and decapod crustaceans. It exhibits a specialized form of aplacental viviparity with oophagy: the females produce a single capsule in each uterus that contains 30–80 ova, of which one ovum develops into an embryo that consumes the rest of the ova and stores the yolk material in its external yolk sac. The growing embryo is mainly sustained by this yolk sac during gestation, though it may be additionally supplied with histotroph ("uterine milk") produced by the mother. The typical litter size is two