A great white shark dwarfs a person. Adult females are typically 14 to 16 feet long, which is about 2.7 times the height of an average American adult, and the largest great whites reach roughly 20 feet and about 4,500 pounds. That is more than 20 times the weight of an average adult. People are not part of the great white's normal diet.
Great White Shark vs Human at a Glance
| Feature | Great White Shark | Human (average US adult) |
|---|---|---|
| Length or height | Males mature at 10 to 13 feet, females at 14 to 16 feet; up to about 20 feet | Men 5 ft 9 in (68.9 in); women 5 ft 3.5 in (63.5 in) |
| Weight | Up to about 4,500 pounds | Men 199 pounds; women 171.8 pounds |
| Teeth | Up to about 50 in use, with five or six replacement rows behind | 32 permanent teeth |
| Bite force | Computer model: up to about 1.8 tonnes for the largest sharks | About 80 kg (UNSW estimate) |
| Lifespan | Possibly 70 years or more (NOAA) | 79.0 years average in the US (2024) |
| Young | Live-born pups, 3.5 to 5 feet at birth | Usually one baby after about nine months |
| Habitat | Temperate and subtropical oceans | Every continent |
Size and Weight
NOAA Fisheries lists white sharks at up to 21 feet and up to 4,500 pounds. The Florida Museum puts the maximum at about 20 feet, possibly 21, and notes unconfirmed reports of larger ones. Females are bigger than males. Males mature at about 10 to 13 feet and females at about 14 to 16 feet. Pups are 3.5 to 5 feet long at birth.
Human numbers come from the CDC's 2021 to 2023 survey. Adult men in the US average 68.9 inches (5 feet 9 inches) and 199.0 pounds. Adult women average 63.5 inches (5 feet 3.5 inches) and 171.8 pounds.
Here is how that works out:
- A 15-foot shark is about 2.6 times as long as the average man and 2.8 times as long as the average woman.
- A 20-foot shark is about 3.5 times as long as the average man.
- A 4,500-pound shark weighs about 23 times as much as the average man and 26 times as much as the average woman.
Quoted weights for ordinary adult great whites vary widely between sources, so only the maximum is used here.
Teeth and Bite
According to Discover Wildlife, a great white has up to 28 teeth in the upper jaw and 25 in the lower jaw in use at once, with five or six more rows developing behind them. The teeth are large, flat, triangular, and serrated. Lost teeth are replaced continuously, and the same source estimates that a shark may go through about 30,000 teeth in its lifetime. See also great white shark teeth.
Humans have 32 permanent teeth, including wisdom teeth, that are not replaced once the adult set comes in.
Nobody has measured a live great white's bite directly. In 2008, researchers at the University of New South Wales built a computer model of a white shark's jaws and predicted a bite force of up to 1.8 tonnes in the largest sharks. They compared that with about 80 kilograms for a human bite and 560 kilograms for an African lion. The researchers also noted that pound for pound the great white's bite is not especially strong. Its absolute force is high because the animal is so large.
Senses
Great whites rely on smell, hearing, and sight, but like other sharks they also have electroreceptors, called ampullae of Lorenzini, that detect the weak electric fields of nearby animals. Humans have no equivalent sense. Smell is a major sense for sharks and far more important to them than to people. Popular claims that a shark can detect a single drop of blood in a set volume of water vary from source to source, so no exact figure is given here.
Speed and Strength
Great whites are built for short, fast bursts of speed when they attack, according to the Florida Museum. Popular sources often give a top speed of 25 to 35 miles per hour, but those figures are estimates, and direct measurements of free-swimming white sharks are scarce.
Diet
Adult great whites eat mainly marine mammals, including seals, sea lions, and dolphins, plus fish, other sharks, and rays. Larger sharks gather around seal and sea lion colonies and sometimes scavenge dead whales. Juveniles eat different food. A University of Sydney study of 40 juvenile white sharks caught in the New South Wales shark meshing program found that mid-water fish such as Australian salmon made up 32.2% of their diet, bottom fish such as stargazers, sole, and flathead 17.4%, rays 14.9%, and reef fish such as eastern blue gropers 5.0%. Marine mammals, other sharks, and squid were eaten less often.
Humans are omnivores and get most of their food from farming, fishing, and shops.
Habitat
NOAA says white sharks live in temperate and subtropical seas worldwide and prefer water of about 50 to 80 °F. They often migrate seasonally to stay within that range. They use near-shore coastal waters and the open ocean. Pups and juveniles tend to stay in shallow, warm coastal waters, and larger sharks shift toward seal and sea lion colonies.
Humans live on every continent.
Reproduction and Lifespan
Great whites are slow to mature and slow to reproduce. NOAA says males mature at about 26 years and females at about 33 years. Pups are live-born. Gestation is unknown but believed to be a year or more, females give birth every two or three years, and FishBase lists litters of 7 to 14 pups. NOAA says white sharks may live 70 years or more, though a maximum age is hard to establish.
Human pregnancy lasts about nine months and usually produces one baby. US life expectancy at birth was 79.0 years in 2024 (76.5 for males and 81.4 for females), according to the CDC.
Do Great Whites Hunt Humans?
No. People are not a normal part of a great white's diet. The International Shark Attack File (ISAF) at the Florida Museum lists 351 unprovoked white shark bites on humans since 1580, 59 of them fatal. That is the highest total for any shark species. In 2025, the ISAF confirmed 65 unprovoked bites worldwide from all species and nine unprovoked fatalities, and it attributed most of that year's fatalities to white sharks, including three surfers in Australia and one in California. Across the past five years the global average has been about eight unprovoked fatalities a year.
The ISAF warns that identifying the species behind a bite is difficult, but white sharks are among the easier species to identify correctly.
Classification
Both animals are vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but they sit in very different classes.
| Rank | Great White Shark | Human |
|---|---|---|
| Phylum | Chordata | Chordata |
| Class | Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fishes) | Mammalia |
| Order | Lamniformes (mackerel sharks) | Primates |
| Family | Lamnidae | Hominidae |
| Genus | Carcharodon | Homo |
| Species | Carcharodon carcharias | Homo sapiens |
The great white is the only living species in its genus. Humans are the only living species in theirs.
Conservation
The IUCN lists the white shark as Vulnerable (assessed in 2018, according to FishBase). It is protected under CITES Appendix II and is a prohibited species in US waters and fisheries, according to NOAA. Threats include bycatch, overfishing, and habitat impacts. NOAA reports that the stock status in US waters is unknown, but abundance in the northwest Atlantic has been increasing since protections began in the 1990s, and the northeast Pacific population appears to be increasing.
See the great white shark profile for more.
Sources
- White shark species profile (NOAA Fisheries)
- White shark species profile (Florida Museum)
- Body measurements of US adults (CDC National Center for Health Statistics)
- Great white's mighty bite revealed (University of New South Wales)
- Unprovoked shark attacks by species (International Shark Attack File, Florida Museum)