SHARKS!!!

WEBVTT
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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus
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from Gimlet. This is the show that pits facts against fins.
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On today's episode, sharks. And of course, since we're talking
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about sharks, we have to start with an Australian surfer.
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Okay, so my name is Mike Wells. I'm from the
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central coast of New South Wales in Australia? Yeah, I
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guess what else would you like to know?
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Mike is a super chill guy. He's been surfing since
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he was three years old and has had some amazing
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experiences on the water.
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I've shared waves with dolphins at my local beaches where
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they just stayed with us and caught waves for 30 minutes.
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Surfed with turtles. I've had whales breach within 20 metres
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of me.
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Oh, my gosh.
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So we've always shared the oceans.
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But Mike has also shared the ocean with a scarier animal.
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So let's go back to 2012. It's the middle of
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summer and Mike had had this crappy day at work
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and really wanted to surf. His girlfriend, who's now his wife,
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came to the beach with him. And at first, everything
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was fine. He got in the water and it felt
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so good.
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Completely calm, stress-free, not a thought in my head aside from,
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you know, it felt really good to be in the ocean.
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Mike was doing what he always did, lying on his
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stomach on the surfboard, paddling past the break. And that's
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when it came out of nowhere.
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Then coming out of the water with its mouth completely
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open was a shark. And so then it clamped down
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onto my arm and its bottom jaw grabbed the board.
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So it had the board and my arm in the
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same mouthful. It was a great white.
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Whoa, Mike.
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What were you thinking at that moment?
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Complete shock. Wasn't thinking anything at all. It happened so fast.
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I was kind of almost face to face with it.
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I threw a punch with my left arm and bopped
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it on the nose.
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You punched the shark?
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Yep, I hit the shark in the nose. It was
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a tough thing to punch as well. I'm not a fighter.
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It's probably the third punch I've ever thrown in my life. Luckily,
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it shocked the shark. It let go, went under the water,
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and then it came back up and it was like
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a submarine surfacing and then came at me again. And
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so the shark rammed the board and hit me and
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I spun around almost 180 degrees to be facing almost
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the complete opposite direction. So it really came back with
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a bit of force and I started thrashing the you know, thinking, okay, kick,
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do anything you can. And I looked to the shore
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and then my wife was looking at me and she
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tilted her head to the side and that's when I
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realised she hasn't seen anything. And that terrified me more
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because I thought it's going to come back and, you know,
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and she's now going to watch the entire thing.
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Then Mike realises that he can't see the shark anymore.
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But he does see a wave that could help him.
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And Mike thinks he has to get to it and
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catch that wave to shore. But he's nervous about sticking
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his bloody arm in the water with the shark still
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out there.
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What I've heard, they can sense a drop of blood
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in the amount of water that's in an Olympic swimming pool.
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But I couldn't paddle hard enough one-handed, so I was
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just watching my.
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Blood spread in the water as i was paddling as
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hard as i could to get this wave.
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Mike finally gets to shore and his arm is spurting
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blood his wife runs up to him and asks what
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happened And.
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I'll remove the expletives. But I said, I believe it
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was a shark.
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That's how you said it, didn't you?
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It's that calm as well.
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We seem to have run into a spot of trouble.
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We're in a pickle here and trouble is brewing.
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So just to translate.
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It was a f * * * ing shark. Run
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and call a f * * * ing ambulance.
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Mike was taken to hospital and went straight into surgery.
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They ended up counting 17 puncture wounds in my arm,
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in my forearm.
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That's a tooth every time there's like 17 teeth.
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17 teeth, yeah.
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Oh, my gosh.
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Each tooth was up to an inch deep.
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After a night in the hospital, surgery and a ton
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of rehab... Pretty remarkably, Mike's arm is now OK. Basically,
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all he's got to show for it is some pretty
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small scars and, of course, this story.
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But, yeah, I got out 10 out of 10. Luckiest
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bloke alive.
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And stories like Mike's are often what we think of
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when it comes to sharks. You know, that they're not
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just predators but almost super predators. And if we happen
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to cross paths with one, there's no hope for us.
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Getting away would mean we're the luckiest bloke alive. In fact,
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this message is all over the place. It's what we
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hear each year on Shark Week. But, of course, it
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usually comes with sinister music and an intense voiceover. News
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of the man-eating great white shakes nerves across Australia. The
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shark is a precision instrument of killing.
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Killing.
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And look, we love these stories. They're exciting and terrifying
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and we eat them up. But today, we're going to
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go beyond the scary stories, diving a little deeper to
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see what the latest science can tell us about sharks
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and why they sometimes bite people. And we're going to
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find out, are sharks as terrifying as we've been led
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to believe? When it comes to sharks, there's a lot of.
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It was a f * * * ing shark.
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But then, there's science. Science vs Sharks is coming up
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just after we paddle past the break. Hey, it's Wendy
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from Science vs and I want to tell you about
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a podcast that I love, Science Friday. They cover all
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sorts of amazing things in the weird and wonderful world
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of science, from how concussions affect our brain to the
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inner secrets of a snake with a spider on its
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Welcome back. Today's show is all about sharks and whether
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you should be scared to go in the water. So far,
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we've had our scary shark story and we've been a
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bit creeped out by Shark Week. Now, let's dive into
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the science. First up, we wanted to speak to a
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scientist who gets up close and personal with sharks. Stanford
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researcher Taylor Chappell, who studies great whites. And he says
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seeing them in the wild is exactly as cool as
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it sounds.
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Yeah, it's almost one of those things you can't explain.
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So you see it on TV and you're like, yeah,
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that's a big animal. But to be there in the
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water with them and seeing them in real life, it
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really is something special.
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And even though there are hundreds of different species of sharks,
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the one that inspires legends is the great white. And
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a lot of this has to do with how they
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hunt and kill their prey, which really is impressive, even
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to scientists. So Taylor described what happens when a great
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white hunts one of its favourite prey. The seal. The
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shark will often start by diving down deep into the water.
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So the sharks swim around, they're looking up, they're looking up.
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And then when they see a seal, that's the moment
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where they accelerate. And it's that split second where the
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seal has to be not paying attention and the shark
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is making its approach from down deep straight up.
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So the shark is barreling through the water and it's huge.
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Great whites can weigh like 2,500 kilos or more than 5,000 pounds.
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And they have all these features that help them move
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very fast. Like even their skin has tiny little bumps
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that create little whirlpools in the water to reduce friction.
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It's like sandpaper. And it's really cool. It's one of
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these crazy, you know, adaptations.
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Yeah.
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So how fast can they swim? Like top speed?
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So we.
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have put accelerometers and speedometers on white sharks when they're
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going through these big bursts. And so they can bust
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it up to about 25 miles an hour when they're
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going through those big explosions.
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Oh, wow.
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Which is pretty incredible. And that's in just a few tailbeats?
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Yeah.
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With just a few flicks of the tail, they can
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go from cruising at about one mile an hour to
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25 miles an hour. And at that moment, the shark
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goes into full-blown attack mode. Sometimes these bursts are so powerful,
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you can actually see a shark's head coming out of
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the water. And meanwhile, to protect their eyes from a
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seal fighting back.
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Their eyes roll back. And so at that point, they're,
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for all intents and purposes, blind.
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And then, when the shark gets close enough... Chomp! The
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shark clamps down with teeth that really are shark-weak level scary.
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The teeth on the bottom of the jaw are sort
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of like fork tines. And then the top teeth are
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those really iconic white shark teeth that they're big, triangular,
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and they're serrated to sort of move back and forth
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in order to cut down through that prey.
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Wow, so it really is like when you grab a steak...
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with the fork, and then you, like, cut a little
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piece with a serrated knife. Like, that is the shark's mouth.
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Yeah, that's what they're doing, which is, you know, that's
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pretty cool.
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And it's not just the teeth that the seal has
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to worry about. Great whites have these massively powerful muscles
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around their jaw, which scientists have estimated gives them one
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of the strongest bite forces in the animal queendom. And
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sometimes it'll use those massive jaws to go for the head.
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Chop it right off. Have you seen a shark decapitate
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a seal?
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I have.
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That part is, it's shocking to see, but it really
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is incredible seeing a predator doing its natural thing. You know,
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you're seeing one animal win and one animal lose.
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So, yeah, the circle of life. Sharks are definitely a
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scary predator here. And they're also very cool animals. But
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a lot of what we hear about sharks goes way
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beyond this. They sound like almost mythical hunters. And one
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part of the myth that we wanted to explore was
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their sense of smell. That they can smell a drop
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of blood from far, far away. And this is something
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that surfer Mike was thinking about as he was actually
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being attacked. And you hear this a lot in movies
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and shark documentaries. You know, that when sharks are on
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the hunt... The shark's most acute sense is activated. Smell.
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A great white, for instance, could sense a single drop
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of blood in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
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And we wanted to find out if this idea was true.
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If sharks really are that good at smelling blood. So
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we sniffed out a researcher who really knows the science here.
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Ha ha ha!
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My name is Trisha Meredith, and I'm an assistant research
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professor at Florida Atlantic University, and I study the sense
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of smell of sharks and their relatives.
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And Trisha told us that this idea of sharks as
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amazing smellers doesn't just come from Shark Week. Like, academics
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think it's true.
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Even in the scientific literature, you'll get papers, swimming noses,
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sharks are the swimming noses of the sea.
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Trisha said this idea that sharks are super smellers emerged
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because people out fishing noticed something weird. When they threw
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fish blood and guts into the water as bait, sharks
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would belly up to the boat pretty quickly. Plus, we
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know that sharks have these huge organs in their heads
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to help them smell.
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So it's this really beautiful, complicated labyrinth of tissue inside
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the nose. Oh, wow.
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I just Googled it. It looks like a little bit
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like a vagina.
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Yeah.
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That's funny.
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Yeah, I could see the comparison.
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Despite the signs pointing to super smelling, Trisha said there
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were hardly any studies that had actually tested if sharks
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really were star sniffers. So she decided to get her
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hands on some sharks to find out. First step, Trisha
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goes fishing and catches some lemon sharks.
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Then you bag them up like they're giant live tropical
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fish that you got from the pet store. into these
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giant bags with seawater pumped full of oxygen and you
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transport them in a truck up to our marine lab.
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Wow.
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And then you drive a truck full of sharks across
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the state. I don't think I've ever heard of anything
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more Floridian. Assuming she doesn't get pulled over, Trish gets
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the animals back to the lab. She'll set them up
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in a special tank. And using a technique that's worked
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in a bunch of animals, she'll put these brave sharks...
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through the smelling challenge of a lifetime. Cue the Snark
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Week music. Perfect. Okay, so to find out if these
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sharks are truly the noses of the ocean, Tricia has
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to get up close and personal with these fearsome fish.
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She's about to stick electrodes up their nose.
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So what the electrode does is it's recording voltage inside
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the nose.
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Generally speaking, when a shark smells something, like blood, its
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neurons get excited. And back at the lab, Tricia takes
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advantage of this. She sets up a screen which can
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actually see that change in voltage.
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So you see this little dip.
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Tricia and her team squirt odors into the shark's nose
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to see what the neurons can pick up. Their arsenal?
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They're using amino acids. which are the building blocks of
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basically every smell out there, including blood.
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Sure, definitely. Yeah, there are amino acids in blood.
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And they squirt these smells into the shark noses at
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lower and lower concentrations.
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To see how low they can go. Can they still
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detect it? Do we still see a response?
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Did Trisha's sharks pass the ultimate smell test? Could they
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smell a drop of.
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Blood The short answer is no.
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That's right. The answer is... Wait, what was that?
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Can they smell a drop of that odor in an
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Olympic-sized swimming pool? The answer is no. Sharks are not
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sensitive enough to detect that concentration. So we kind of
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busted that myth.
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Okay, enough snark week. Back to Science Versus. So when
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Tricia looked at her findings, she saw that the sharks
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she tested were about as good at smelling as other
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fish in the ocean. Like, they were as good as salmon.
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What a fish slap in the face. Now, Tricia only
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tested a couple of shark species, no great whites, but
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she reckons that what she found applies to other types
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of sharks as well.
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We like to paint them as very special, but, you know,
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they're actually just fish. I know it's a little, like, boring, but.
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They're fish. Okay, so sharks don't have supernatural smelling skills.
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They can't sniff us out any better than a salmon could.
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They're fish. But they are fish with a hell of
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a bite. So our next question is, if you get
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in the water and a shark is nearby, will they
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go for you? To find out, we found ourselves a
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great white shark to be the judge, Ruth Bader Finsberg.
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What was that Ruth? Sorry, I can't, I can't, um, hmm, okay,
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not helpful. Well, if we can't talk to a great white,
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let's turn to the next best thing, a shark scientist.
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And back to Taylor Chappell from Stanford University. Hey Taylor.
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Hey, how's it going?
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So Taylor told us that if sharks loved eating humans,
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then you would expect that basically every time we're in
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the water near a shark, they would try to take
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a cheeky bite.
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So that's the funny thing is that's not necessarily the case.
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Scientists in Australia and South Africa have observed great white
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sharks and bull sharks swimming near hundreds of people and
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they just don't go after them. Taylor has seen this
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too when he goes tagging great whites near an island
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called Año Nuevo in California.
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And about a half a mile from, or not even
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a half a mile, from where I work is a
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surf spot. So I'll have a day where there'll be six, seven, eight,
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up to 15 sharks swimming around my boat at one time.
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And I can see a half mile away, the guys
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in the lineup surfing. And no one has ever been
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attacked at that spot. So if those sharks wanted to
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eat us, there would be very few surfers left in
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the water.
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Many scientists told us that people and sharks often swim
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in the same waters, and yet we hardly ever get attacked.
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Like millions of people hit the beach each year. And
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yet only 60 to 100 get bitten by sharks each
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year worldwide. And on average, only six people are killed. Six.
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You're way more likely to be, you know, have a
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TV fall on you and die. You know, not very
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many people are terrified of walking past their televisions.
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And this is all kind of weird, right? Like you
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would think that we would be a tasty treat for sharks.
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So why aren't they going after us all the time? Well,
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until we learn to communicate with sharks like Ruth Bader Finsberg,
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it's hard to know for sure. But we do know
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that for millions of years, sharks have been eating marine animals,
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not weird hairless apes who are bad swimmers. And we
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know that the animals sharks are regularly going for are
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made of different stuff to us. Like, for example, seals
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are chock full of blubber.
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The blubber of a marine mammal is just like... You know,
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one of those power bars. It's just packed full of
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energy and what the animal needs.
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On top of this, we often have this idea that
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sharks will eat just about anything that swims in their crosshairs.
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But new research is starting to show a totally different picture.
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Turns out sharks aren't mindless killing machines.
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They're figuring out exactly what they want, and that's the
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only thing they're going after.
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They're being very discerning.
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Taylor Thompson. us about some surprising footage that he caught
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when he strapped a camera to the back of a
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great white.
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You see a silhouette at the surface.
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You see the shark go from a couple miles an hour,
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burst speed up to 20-some miles an hour. At the
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last second, right before it gets to that unassuming silhouette
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at the surface, it bails. And it turns out that
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the silhouette at the surface was a bird and not
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a seal.
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It looks like when the shark got close, it realized
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this dinky bird just wasn't worth it. And newer research
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in tiger sharks is showing basically the same thing. That
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most of the time, sharks don't go around chomping everything
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they see at every opportunity. They're making some sort of
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calculation about what's worth the effort. And it seems that
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in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases, humans, you
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and me, we're not worth it for them. And by
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the way, if you are one of the very, very, very,
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very unlucky people who do get bit by a shark,
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there's a little bit of science that can help you.
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One study of over 500 shark attacks done in the
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1970s found that poking a shark in the eye was
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one of the best things you could do to fight
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it off. This does leave one big question bobbing on
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the surface, though. What do we know about these odd
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sharks that do go after people, like that one that
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sunk its teeth into Mike's arm? What's up with those sharks?
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Are they different somehow? Are there sharks who have developed
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a taste for human flesh? That's coming up after the break.
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Welcome back. We just learnt that shark attacks are super rare,
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like TV falling on you rare. But they do sometimes happen.
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So we wanted to find out more about these attacks,
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because even though they're rare, they're also very scary. They
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even scare shark researchers, like Dr. Chris Pepper Neff, who's
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at the University of Sydney. And Chris recently went scuba
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diving around Cape Town, where great whites are known to frolic.
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I'm swimming across the water and I'm like, I know
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the statistics. I know I'm very unlikely to run into
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a shark. and thinking, oh, you know, I can do
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this as a rational human being. And then I start flailing.
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I ran out of rationality. I started screaming to the
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boat guy pretty early, like, get me out of the water.
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Chris, like almost everyone who goes into the water, was
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absolutely fine.
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Yeah, it wasn't my shining moment of being a shark researcher.
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But we called up Chris, not because we wanted to
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hear about his holiday, but because we wanted to know
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why the odd shark does bite a human. And he
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told us about one idea that's been floating around since
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at least the 1950s, and it's called rogue shark theory.
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There are rogue sharks that get a taste for human blood,
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and they're the ones you really need to be concerned about.
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This idea basically says that there are certain sharks, bad apples,
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who move into an area, bite one person, get a
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00:23:23.670 --> 00:23:27.359
taste for it, and then they start hunting and biting
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more and more people. The guy who came up with
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this was a respected doctor and researcher. And in 1950,
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he wrote in a scientific journal that a rogue shark, quote,
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must be hunted until it is destroyed. And if this
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sounds familiar... It is as if God created the devil
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and gave him Jaws.
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That story, the rogue shark story, is really personified in
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the movie Jaws.
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So the shark in Jaws is the quintessential rogue shark
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and it captured our imagination.
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I remember laying on the floor like I had this
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giant bowl of popcorn and And the shark comes out
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of the water. And I flew. And so did the
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bowl of popcorn. It went flying across the room. I
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was screaming.
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Chris told us that after Jaws came out, you start
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seeing this idea of rogue shark theory all over the place.
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Like Shark Week went wild on it. Is this a
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rogue with a taste for human flesh?
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Rogue shark theory is still being touted by people today.
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Every beach I go to, When there's a shark bite,
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they'll say it was a rogue shark.
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So decades after this idea was first suggested, what do
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we know about rogue sharks? Can this theory explain why
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00:24:54.529 --> 00:24:59.430
the odd person gets bitten? Well, if it were true,
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then a lot of shark attacks should be caused by
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the same shark. You know, the bad apples. The rogues.
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And is that what we find? Luckily, scientists have been
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systematically tracking shark attacks for about half a century. And
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they can't find these rampant rogues chomping their way through
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the database. In fact, in all that time, there's only
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been one case where scientists agree that the same shark
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bit more than one person.
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That's the reality. So what we end up with is
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a much less sensationalised story.
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00:25:39.730 --> 00:25:43.230
So let's go a little deeper on this less sensationalised story.
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If there were so-called rogue sharks, you'd expect them to
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make a meal out of every person they bite, you know,
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because they love the taste of human flesh. But surprisingly,
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00:25:56.119 --> 00:26:00.019
that's not what happens. Studies of shark bites have found
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00:26:00.119 --> 00:26:03.390
that in the vast majority of cases, sharks will bite
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00:26:03.450 --> 00:26:06.990
a person once and then leave them. They don't stick
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00:26:07.049 --> 00:26:11.970
around to eat them, which... kind of remarkably, is why
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00:26:12.269 --> 00:26:16.039
most people who are bitten by sharks actually end up
447
00:26:16.319 --> 00:26:19.539
better off than our surfer Mike. Here's Chris again.
448
00:26:19.559 --> 00:26:24.579
I spent a decade researching this, and there's no evidence
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00:26:24.619 --> 00:26:27.180
to support the rogue shark theory. There are no such
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00:26:27.259 --> 00:26:31.589
thing as rogue sharks. There is something else entirely going
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on here.
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Nowadays, scientists generally think that when sharks do bite people,
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it's probably not because the shark actually wanted to eat
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a person, but rather they're confusing us for maybe stuff
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like seals, or perhaps they're freaked out by people in
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the water and they get defensive. And while Chris says
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we can never really know what motivates a wild animal,
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00:26:56.019 --> 00:26:59.569
it's obvious that Hollywood sharks are working off a totally
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different script. Like producer Rose Rimler talked to Chris about
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what the Jaws shark was getting up to.
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I mean, it's terrorizing the public. It's picking on little kids.
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It's picking on the over-sexualized girl.
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It's judgy.
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Mm-hmm.
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You know, the shark's a total asshole. That's not shark behavior.
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00:27:20.829 --> 00:27:22.710
That's horror movie behavior.
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00:27:22.950 --> 00:27:24.710
Yeah, that's classic slasher movie.
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00:27:24.849 --> 00:27:27.630
That's classic slasher movie. And it's all false.
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00:27:28.369 --> 00:27:32.970
Still, though, from the evidence we have... Generally speaking, sharks
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00:27:33.190 --> 00:27:37.250
aren't interested in eating us. But the ironic thing is
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that we are very interested in eating sharks. We eat
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a ton of sharks. Actually, 100,000 tons of shark a
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year at least. People often shake their fists at shark
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finning and shark fin soup, which is a delicacy in
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parts of Asia. But people actually eat shark meat all
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over the world. Like in the UK and Australia, you
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00:28:04.940 --> 00:28:07.619
can buy shark meat with your chips. You can also
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get shark meat in the US. On top of that,
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we're scooping up a lot of sharks that we don't
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even want to eat. It happens by accident because of
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industrialised fishing. It turns out the mighty shark... is actually
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quite vulnerable.
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They're very easy to catch in the open ocean, and
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so they end up being a lot of bycatch. And
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rather than throw the fish back, which they may do sometimes,
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more often than not they don't.
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All of these pressures have created a sort of perfect sharknado.
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And these days, one quarter of all shark species and
489
00:28:44.569 --> 00:28:46.630
their relatives are threatened with extinction.
490
00:28:46.650 --> 00:28:51.509
One quarter. And that includes a lot of puny-looking sharks
491
00:28:51.569 --> 00:28:54.119
that don't get a lot of attention. But it also
492
00:28:54.130 --> 00:28:55.420
includes the great white.
493
00:28:55.440 --> 00:29:00.940
You know, it's a very tragic, very difficult situation.
494
00:29:01.799 --> 00:29:04.220
We don't know exactly what will go wrong if we
495
00:29:04.259 --> 00:29:07.200
lose more sharks. But from everything we do know about
496
00:29:07.240 --> 00:29:09.960
how food webs work, we can see that when we
497
00:29:10.019 --> 00:29:14.329
lose predators, it has trickle-down effects. For example, lose the
498
00:29:14.369 --> 00:29:18.440
wolves in Yellowstone, and we got overrun with elk. And so,
499
00:29:18.660 --> 00:29:22.220
bottom line, Chris says sharks are important, and we really
500
00:29:22.279 --> 00:29:23.539
should stop hating on them.
501
00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:28.150
It's our responsibility to try to weed through this fake
502
00:29:29.089 --> 00:29:31.910
bulls * * t. And it's not that sharks are perfect.
503
00:29:32.809 --> 00:29:37.640
Sharks still bite people. But the whole picture of what
504
00:29:37.700 --> 00:29:39.640
sharks are is yet to be told.
505
00:29:40.650 --> 00:29:45.799
Well, until now. So when it comes to sharks as
506
00:29:45.839 --> 00:29:49.599
super predators, the John Wicks of the sea, does this
507
00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:58.119
idea stack up? Well, sharks are definitely amazing hunters, but no,
508
00:29:58.200 --> 00:30:00.940
they can't sniff a drop of blood from far away.
509
00:30:00.960 --> 00:30:05.059
And considering how many millions of people go into waters
510
00:30:05.119 --> 00:30:07.960
where sharks are hanging out and yet don't get bitten,
511
00:30:07.980 --> 00:30:12.200
it does seem like sharks aren't out for human flesh.
512
00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:19.809
They prefer marine life. So, bottom line, sharks aren't total arseholes.
513
00:30:21.809 --> 00:30:26.519
They're just big, cool fish. And the truth is, we're
514
00:30:26.559 --> 00:30:29.059
more of a threat to them than they are to us.
515
00:30:30.380 --> 00:30:33.710
Every researcher we spoke to is annoyed by this killer
516
00:30:33.769 --> 00:30:37.509
shark mythology that just won't die. And they're working very
517
00:30:37.569 --> 00:30:40.210
hard to undo the work of Jaws and Shark Week.
518
00:30:40.869 --> 00:30:42.990
By the way, we reached out to those at Shark
519
00:30:43.009 --> 00:30:45.710
Week and they told us that they contribute to shark
520
00:30:45.750 --> 00:30:51.130
research and conservation. Despite all their efforts, our researchers all
521
00:30:51.190 --> 00:30:55.650
said that sharks need an image makeover. You know, A rebrand.
522
00:30:56.150 --> 00:30:58.910
Like Taylor, who studies great whites, told us that he
523
00:30:59.009 --> 00:31:01.630
and his mates are now taking the great out of
524
00:31:01.670 --> 00:31:02.170
their name.
525
00:31:02.630 --> 00:31:05.779
Rather than this really sort of scary great white shark,
526
00:31:05.819 --> 00:31:06.650
we just talk about him.
527
00:31:06.579 --> 00:31:07.180
As a white shark.
528
00:31:07.599 --> 00:31:10.319
Trisha, who did the smelling study, thinks that the shark
529
00:31:10.380 --> 00:31:12.819
bite needs a pivot. She wants to call it.
530
00:31:13.039 --> 00:31:13.880
A light mouthing.
531
00:31:14.380 --> 00:31:16.779
You got that? A light mouthing.
532
00:31:18.500 --> 00:31:20.359
Can you tell that I'm team shark?
533
00:31:21.940 --> 00:31:24.769
Even Mike, our surfer, who was bitten by a shark,
534
00:31:24.990 --> 00:31:26.230
has his own terminology.
535
00:31:26.809 --> 00:31:29.490
It's just having a little nibble. Yeah, I've got no
536
00:31:29.549 --> 00:31:30.450
issues with Bruce.
537
00:31:30.730 --> 00:31:33.529
Bruce? You named your shark Bruce?
538
00:31:33.549 --> 00:31:34.670
Yeah, I've given him a name.
539
00:31:37.509 --> 00:31:39.210
Yeah, he's doing his.
540
00:31:39.109 --> 00:31:40.029
Thing, I'll do mine.
541
00:31:40.789 --> 00:31:43.390
And perhaps the guy with the grandest plan to give
542
00:31:43.450 --> 00:31:45.769
sharks a bit of a glow-up is Chris.
543
00:31:46.210 --> 00:31:50.690
Sharks have been demonised and when I do my musical,
544
00:31:50.769 --> 00:31:54.730
Flaws the Musical, It's going to be, you know, like Wicked.
545
00:31:55.470 --> 00:31:59.279
It's going to be like Wicked. And, you know, the
546
00:31:59.420 --> 00:32:02.799
shark is going to be the star of the musical.
547
00:32:03.240 --> 00:32:08.599
And the shark starts singing, you know, Defying Gravity or
548
00:32:09.480 --> 00:32:10.140
whatever it is.
549
00:32:10.680 --> 00:32:13.119
Do you have any songs ready to go?
550
00:32:13.599 --> 00:32:17.619
Oh, I'm working on them. I've already bought FlawsTheMusical.com.
551
00:32:23.089 --> 00:32:23.450
Rose?
552
00:32:23.869 --> 00:32:24.230
Yeah?
553
00:32:24.829 --> 00:32:25.849
Should we help him out a little?
554
00:32:25.869 --> 00:32:27.190
I think so.
555
00:32:33.319 --> 00:32:37.319
I know you people are scared of me But I'm
556
00:32:37.380 --> 00:32:39.119
not the one to blame.
557
00:32:41.079 --> 00:32:45.500
You saw Jaws as a child And now you think
558
00:32:45.779 --> 00:32:47.759
I'm maimed.
559
00:32:48.980 --> 00:32:53.799
But I need to eat sometimes And even if you're
560
00:32:53.940 --> 00:32:58.160
on the beach I'll choose a.
561
00:32:58.180 --> 00:33:06.549
Seal for food Roll back my eyes and reach Or
562
00:33:06.690 --> 00:33:12.630
I might try to bite a manatee But.
563
00:33:12.529 --> 00:33:17.910
Human flesh It's just not my cup of tea. So
564
00:33:18.170 --> 00:33:19.809
I won't pull you down.
565
00:33:20.750 --> 00:33:23.569
Sharky, I find that hard to believe.
566
00:33:23.589 --> 00:33:26.029
Dolphinder, haven't you been listening to anything?
567
00:33:26.049 --> 00:33:28.910
You really don't want to eat humans?
568
00:33:29.569 --> 00:33:36.539
No, I just want to bite humanity. Or maybe a seal,
569
00:33:36.559 --> 00:33:40.200
but human flesh. It's really just not what I'm into.
570
00:33:41.789 --> 00:33:50.619
So I won't pull you down. That's Science vs. Sharks. Alright,
571
00:33:50.640 --> 00:33:55.059
so we're back to our regular job. This is actually
572
00:33:55.160 --> 00:33:58.460
our last episode of the season. We'll be back in September.
573
00:33:58.539 --> 00:34:01.619
Stick around for a fun walk down memory lane after
574
00:34:01.640 --> 00:34:05.829
the credits. But first, it's time for the citations. Can't
575
00:34:05.849 --> 00:34:12.329
believe we're at this moment. How many citations in this
576
00:34:12.369 --> 00:34:16.409
week's episode? Producer Rose Rimla. Host Wendy Zuckerman, there's over
577
00:34:16.409 --> 00:34:17.269
120 citations.
578
00:34:17.429 --> 00:34:17.989
Whoa!
579
00:34:18.510 --> 00:34:21.849
That may be a, like, a record. There's a lot
580
00:34:21.869 --> 00:34:24.670
of shark information out there. There's a lot of shark information.
581
00:34:24.949 --> 00:34:26.849
And if people want to read this shark information, where
582
00:34:26.869 --> 00:34:28.610
should they go? They can click on the link in
583
00:34:28.650 --> 00:34:30.469
our show notes and it'll take them to the transcript
584
00:34:30.510 --> 00:34:36.960
with all the citations. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. This episode
585
00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:39.940
was produced by Rose Rimler with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman,
586
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:42.960
along with Meryl Horne and Michelle Dang. Our senior producer
587
00:34:43.019 --> 00:34:45.820
is Caitlin Soaring. We're edited by Blythe Terrell and this
588
00:34:45.840 --> 00:34:49.250
week with help from Caitlin Soaring. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly.
589
00:34:49.409 --> 00:34:52.750
Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. A huge thanks
590
00:34:52.789 --> 00:34:55.510
to the amazing team of musicians that helped us with
591
00:34:55.590 --> 00:34:59.090
Floors and our Snark Week music. Led by Peter Leonard
592
00:34:59.230 --> 00:35:03.420
along with Bobby Lord, Emma Munger and Marcus Thorne-Bagelar. Recording
593
00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:08.239
assistance from Carolyn Perryman, Shannon Kaysen, Sam Turkin, Beth McMullen
594
00:35:08.550 --> 00:35:12.650
and Jesse Wensloff. A big thanks to George Burgess, Peter Pyle,
595
00:35:12.769 --> 00:35:17.530
Dr David Schiffman, Professor Peter Klimley, Professor Yela Atema, Professor
596
00:35:17.590 --> 00:35:22.630
Stefan Kajura, Dr Blake Chapman, Ninka De Haas and many more.
597
00:35:22.789 --> 00:35:25.769
Thank you so much. Plus a special thanks to the
598
00:35:25.809 --> 00:35:29.980
Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. And so here it is,
599
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:32.679
our little montage of the season that was.
600
00:35:36.469 --> 00:35:37.780
And do you want to know what a baby alligator
601
00:35:37.800 --> 00:35:38.500
sounds like?
602
00:35:38.519 --> 00:35:42.559
That is exactly what I want to know. A baby goes, ow, ow, ow, ow.
603
00:35:43.800 --> 00:35:46.860
Somebody at the company was doing a s * *
604
00:35:46.750 --> 00:35:49.230
* job. And I mean literally, they were like taking
605
00:35:49.269 --> 00:35:52.449
s * * * s. Semen is a viscous substance.
606
00:35:52.570 --> 00:35:54.090
It's like the cheese on the top of a pizza.
607
00:35:54.170 --> 00:35:55.349
Thanks for that image, by the way.
608
00:35:55.449 --> 00:35:55.849
Wonderful.
609
00:35:57.769 --> 00:36:03.489
It looks like a green, gloppy, slimy goo. That was
610
00:36:03.530 --> 00:36:03.929
the thing.
611
00:36:03.989 --> 00:36:05.630
I was completely flummoxed.
612
00:36:05.989 --> 00:36:07.550
I said, my God, it's a jail.
613
00:36:07.949 --> 00:36:10.300
The surgeons would literally have buckets of pus that they
614
00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:12.219
would collect from patients.
615
00:36:11.800 --> 00:36:15.039
Who would just ooze just tons of pus.
616
00:36:15.059 --> 00:36:18.460
I'm going to just bring you up on feminist charges
617
00:36:18.519 --> 00:36:20.480
of no possession.
618
00:36:19.909 --> 00:36:23.969
Of a specular. Moody and emotional. And I just need
619
00:36:24.010 --> 00:36:25.889
some goddamn sugar in my face, honestly.
620
00:36:28.829 --> 00:36:30.989
It's put the wrong end of the pipette into the
621
00:36:31.030 --> 00:36:34.420
bottle of liquid. the sperm juice on my hand.
622
00:36:34.440 --> 00:36:35.960
Okay. Wow.
623
00:36:36.239 --> 00:36:39.659
All right. So I'm gonna, let's give it a go.
624
00:36:42.800 --> 00:36:46.269
I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
625
00:36:46.309 --> 00:36:47.210
fact you in September.