The Misunderstood Shark? I Don't Think So.

Sharks get a raw deal when it comes to public perception, is the thinking of the learned and the green. "You're more likely to be killed by a falling coconut or a cow than by a shark, they say.  For us watery people that comparison does not serve.  Ain't nobody made so much as eye contact with a shark whilst standing under a coconut tree or on a cow farm.   We worry about sharks when we're IN THE OCEAN, dressed like seals and acting not much better.  No windsurfer, kiteboarder, SUPper or surfer has ever been even grazed by a falling coconut while in the lineup waiting for the next set.

Then there's the live and let live crowd.

"It's their ocean,"  they say.

"Yeah well it's my leg" we say back!

I don't misunderstand sharks.  I understand perfectly:  If a shark attacks me, I am befuckled.   And I am not comforted by the "sharks don't want to eat people" line of thinking:

"Many will take a sample bite, and taste it with taste buds just behind their teeth, to be certain it is something properly edible. If it does not taste like food, they will often spit it out at this time, and swim away.

This explains why so many “attacks” on humans are just a single bite; most sharks do not feed on mammals and do not recognize the taste of the humans to be food."

Oh thank goodness. I'm not being eaten, I'm just being tasted.  Good-bye thigh!  

Poor misunderstood shark.

(Top:  Illustration from a Wall Street Journal article.   Bottom:  Ain't no pictures I've seen of a shark sticking its tongue out to lick something...see if it likes it.  They be all like this.)

Comments

[bowsprite]

you are so funny! HEAR hear! I swim out in the Sound by East Marion almost everyday, and I know my chances of being hit on Rte 25 by a texting or drunk driver are higher than being 'tasted'.

But still, I bring a lot of gauze, heavy flow period pads (to soak up what gushes out the wound) and my cellphone (that has no reception there) and have emergency numbers written, just in case I am not conscious to tend to my bite(s), since I swim alone.

And I try to breath out like a huge monster, not like a tasty seal, so the sharks aren't tempted.

I just bought this book:
Sharks
The Animal Answer Guide, by Gene Helfman and George H. Burgess

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/sharks

I'll send to you when done, or we meet for beer and I give it to you!!!

[Brian S]

Michael, I'm with you on this one. Maybe that's why the Might Larry Hoff switched to the Great Lakes.