SHARKS!!!

Summary

Science Vs: SHARKS!!!

Science Vs by Spotify Studios delves deep into the enigmatic world of sharks, separating sensational myths from scientific facts. Hosted by Wendy Zuckerman, this episode titled "SHARKS!!!" released on June 14, 2019, explores shark behavior, debunks common misconceptions, and highlights the importance of shark conservation. Below is a detailed summary of the episode, structured into clear sections with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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1. A Harrowing Shark Encounter: Mike Wells' Story

The episode opens with a gripping personal account from Mike Wells (00:01-06:39), a seasoned Australian surfer who shares his traumatic experience of being attacked by a great white shark in 2012.

• Experience the Attack:
  “Then coming out of the water with its mouth completely open was a shark… It was a great white.” (03:05)

• Instinctual Defense:
  “I threw a punch with my left arm and bopped it on the nose.” (03:28)

Mike recounts how he managed to survive the attack by instinctively defending himself, resulting in 17 puncture wounds to his arm. Remarkably, after surgery and rehabilitation, he emerged with only minor scars, considering the severity of the attack.

• Surviving Against the Odds:
  “I got out 10 out of 10 luckiest bloke alive.” (06:19)

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2. Understanding Great White Shark Behavior

Transitioning from Mike’s story, Wendy introduces Taylor Chapman (08:28-19:23), a Stanford researcher specializing in great white sharks, who provides insights into the hunting prowess of these apex predators.

• Experiencing Great Whites:
  “Seeing them in the wild is exactly as cool as it sounds… It really is something special.” (09:32)

• Hunting Techniques:
  “They accelerate, and it's that split second where the seal has to be not paying attention.” (10:13)

Taylor explains the efficient hunting strategies of great whites, highlighting their incredible speed—up to 25 miles per hour during an attack burst—and their specialized dental and muscular adaptations that make them formidable hunters.

• Adaptive Features:
  “It's like sandpaper, and it's really cool. It's one of these crazy, you know, adaptations.” (10:51)

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3. Debunking the Super Sense of Smell Myth

The episode challenges the popular belief that sharks possess an extraordinary sense of smell, capable of detecting a single drop of blood in an Olympic-sized pool. Tricia Meredith (14:06-18:22), an assistant research professor at Florida Atlantic University, conducted a study to test this myth.

• Scientific Exploration:
  “The short answer is no. Sharks are not sensitive enough to detect that concentration.” (17:26)

Tricia's research involved exposing lemon sharks to various concentrations of amino acids found in blood. Her findings revealed that sharks' olfactory capabilities are comparable to those of other fish, such as salmon, thus debunking the exaggerated claims often portrayed in media.

• Challenging Popular Beliefs:
  “We like to paint them as very special, but, you know, they're actually just fish.” (18:13)

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4. Rogue Shark Theory: Myth vs. Reality

The discussion then shifts to the "rogue shark theory," which suggests that certain individual sharks develop a taste for human flesh and repeatedly attack humans. Chris Pepper Neff (25:06-32:13), a shark researcher at the University of Sydney, provides clarity on this topic.

• Questioning Rogue Sharks:
  “Rogue shark theory is still being touted by people today…but there's no evidence to support it.” (29:09)

Extensive data analysis over decades shows that shark attacks are rare and typically isolated incidents. Instead of rogue behavior, most shark bites are likely cases of mistaken identity or defensive reactions.

• Scientific Consensus:
  “There is no evidence to support the rogue shark theory. There are no such things as rogue sharks.” (29:09)

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5. Sharks and Human Interaction: A Rare Misunderstanding

Taylor Chapman further elucidates why, despite frequent overlaps between human and shark activities in the ocean, shark attacks remain infrequent.

• Non-Interest in Humans:
  “If these sharks wanted to eat us, there would be very few surfers left in the water.” (19:41)

Statistics support this, with millions of beachgoers annually experiencing virtually no shark interactions, contradicting the sensational fear propagated by media and pop culture.

• Statistical Rarity:
  “Only 60 to 100 get bitten by sharks each year worldwide. And on average only six people are killed.” (20:32)

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6. The Human Impact: Overfishing and Conservation

Despite their portrayal as dangerous predators, sharks face significant threats from human activities. The episode highlights how humans are a greater threat to sharks than vice versa.

• Overfishing Impact:
  “Everybody is more of a threat to them than they are to us.” (32:29)

With over 100,000 tons of shark meat consumed annually and practices like shark finning leading to severe population declines, one quarter of all shark species are now threatened with extinction. The loss of sharks could disrupt marine ecosystems, similar to how the absence of wolves affected Yellowstone's elk population.

• Conservation Urgency:
  “Sharks have been demonized. And when I do my musical flaws, the musical, it's gonna be… wicked.” (35:02)

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7. Changing Perceptions: Rebranding Sharks

To counteract the negative stereotypes, scientists and enthusiasts are advocating for a rebranding of sharks to reflect their true nature and ecological importance.

• Rebranding Efforts:
  “They're just big cool fish. And the truth is, we're more of a threat to them than they are to us.” (33:56)

Initiatives include renaming great whites to simply "white sharks" and promoting educational campaigns to highlight their role in marine ecosystems.

• Positive Messaging:
  “Can you tell that I'm team shark?” (34:11)

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8. Conclusion: Embracing the Reality of Sharks

Science Vs wraps up by reaffirming that sharks, while impressive and sometimes intimidating, are not the mindless killers depicted in fiction. Understanding their behavior and ecology fosters a greater appreciation and urgency for their conservation.

• Final Takeaway:
  “Sharks aren't total assholes. They're just big cool fish.” (33:56)

The episode emphasizes the need to move beyond fear-driven narratives and recognize sharks as vital components of marine life deserving protection and respect.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Mike Wells (03:05): “Then coming out of the water with its mouth completely open was a shark… It was a great white.”
• Mike Wells (06:19): “I got out 10 out of 10 luckiest bloke alive.”
• Taylor Chapman (09:32): “Seeing them in the wild is exactly as cool as it sounds… It really is something special.”
• Tricia Meredith (17:26): “We like to paint them as very special, but, you know, they're actually just fish.”
• Chris Pepper Neff (29:09): “There is no evidence to support the rogue shark theory. There are no such things as rogue sharks.”
• Wendy Zuckerman (33:56): “Sharks aren't total assholes. They're just big cool fish.”
• Chris Pepper Neff (35:02): “They have a sort of awesome…..”

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Final Thoughts

Science Vs effectively dismantles exaggerated fears surrounding sharks by presenting evidence-based research and expert insights. By highlighting personal stories, scientific studies, and conservation challenges, the episode fosters a balanced understanding of sharks, advocating for their preservation and respect within marine ecosystems.

Transcript

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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[Taylor Chapman]

A contractor, I don't pay for materials.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I don't use, so why would I.

[Taylor Chapman]

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[Wendy Zuckerman]

From Verizon Business is so perfect. Now I can choose exactly what I want and I only pay for what I need right now with my biz plan. Get our best price as low as $25 a line. Visit verizon.com business to get started today. Price per month with five plus lines includes auto pay and paper free billing and special intro offer discounts, taxes, fees, economic adjustment charge and terms apply. Offers end June 10, 2025 hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Verses from Gimlet. This is the show that pits facts against fins. On today's episode, sharks. And of course since we're talking about sharks, we have to start with an Australian surfer.

[Mike Wells]

Okay, so my name is Mike Wells. I'm from the central coast of New South Wales in Australia. Yeah, I guess. What else would you like to know?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mike is a super chill guy. He's been surfing since he was three years old and has had some amazing experiences on the water.

[Mike Wells]

I've shared waves with dolphins at my local beaches where they just stayed with us and caught waves for 30 minutes. Surf with turtles. I've had whales breach within 20 meters of me.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh my gosh.

[Mike Wells]

So we've always shared the ocean, but.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mike has also shared the ocean with a scarier animal. So let's go back to 2012. It's the middle of summer and Mike had had this crappy day at work and really wanted a surf his girlfriend, who's now his Wife came to the beach with him and at first everything was fine. He got in the water and it felt so good.

[Mike Wells]

Completely calm, stress free. Not a thought in my head aside from, you know, it felt really good to be in the ocean.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mike was doing what he always did, lying on his stomach on the surfboard, paddling past the break, and that's when it came out of nowhere.

[Mike Wells]

Then coming out of the water with its mouth completely open was a shark. And so then it clamped down onto my ar and its bottom jaw grabbed the board. So it had the board and my arm in the same mouthful. It was a great white.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Whoa. What were you thinking at that moment?

[Mike Wells]

Complete, complete shock. Wasn't thinking anything at all. It happened so fast. I was kind of almost face to face with it. I threw a punch with my left arm and bopped it on the nose.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You punched the shark?

[Mike Wells]

Yep, I hit the shark in the. No, was a tough thing to punch as well. I'm not a fighter. It's probably the third punch I've ever thrown in my life. Luckily, it shocked the shark. It let go, went under the water, and then it came back up and it was like a submarine surfacing. And then came at me again. And so the shark rammed the board and hit me. And I spun around almost 180 degrees to be facing almost the complete opposite direction. So it really came back with a bit of force. And I started thrashing, you know, thinking, okay, kick, do anything you can. And I looked to the shore and then my wife was looking at me and she tilted her head to the side. And that's when I realized she hasn't seen anything. And that terrified me more because I thought it's going to come back and, you know, and she's now going to watch the entire thing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Then Mike realizes that he can't see the shark anymore, but he does see a wave that could help him. And Mike thinks he has to get to it and catch that wave to shore. But he's nervous about sticking his bloody arm in the water with the shark still out there.

[Mike Wells]

What I've heard, they can sense a drop of blood in the amount of water that's in an Olympic swimming pool. But I couldn't paddle hard enough one handed, so I was just watching my blood spread in the water as I was paddling as hard as I could to get this wave.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mike finally gets to shore and his arm is spurting blood. His wife runs up to him and asks what happened.

[Mike Wells]

And I'll remove the expletives, but I said, I Believe it was a shark.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That sounded. Didn't you.

[Mike Wells]

It's that calm as well.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

We seem to have run into a spot of trouble.

[Mike Wells]

We're in a pickle here and trouble is brewing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So just to translate, it was a.

[Mike Wells]

Shark run and call a ambulance.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mike was taken to hospital and went straight into surgery.

[Mike Wells]

They ended up counting 17 puncture wounds in my arm, in my forearm.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's a tooth. Every time there's like a, like, so 17, like, teeth.

[Mike Wells]

17 teeth? Yep. Oh, my God. Each tooth was up to an inch deep.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

After a night in the hospital surgery and a ton of rehab, pretty remarkably, Mike's arm is now okay. Basically, all he's got to show for it is some pretty small scars. And of course, this story.

[Mike Wells]

But, yeah, I got out 10 out of 10 luckiest bloke alive.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And stories like Mike's are often what we think of when it comes to sharks. You know that they're not just predators, but almost super predators. And if we happen to cross paths with one, there's no hope for us. Getting away would mean we're the luckiest bloke alive. In fact, this message is all over the place. It's what we hear each year on Shark Week. But of course, it usually comes with sinister music and an intense voiceover. News of the man eating great white shakes nerves across Australia. The shark is a precision instrument of killing. Killing. And look, we love these stories. They're exciting and terrifying and we eat them up. But today, we're going to go beyond the scary stories, diving a little deeper to see what the latest science can tell us about sharks and why they sometimes bite people. And we're going to find out. Are sharks as terrifying as we've been led to believe? When it comes to sharks, there's a lot of it was a shark, but then there's science. Science versus sharks is coming up just after we paddle past the brake. At gmc, ignorance is the furthest thing from bliss. Bliss is research, testing, testing the testing until it results in not just one truck, but a whole lineup. The 2025 GMC Sierra lineup, featuring the Sierra 1500, Heavy Duty and EV. Because Truck True bliss is removing every shadow from every doubt. We are professional grade. Visit gmc.com to learn more.

[Tricia Meredith]

With a Venmo debit card, you can.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Venmo more than just your friends. You can use your balance in so many ways. You can Venmo everything. Need gas? You can Venmo this. How about snacks? You can Venmo that. Your favorite band's merch. You Can Venmo this or their next show.

[Tricia Meredith]

You can Venmo that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Visit Venmo me debit to learn more. You can Venmo this or you can Venmo that. You can Venmo this or you can Venmo that.

[Taylor Chapman]

You can Venmo.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license. My MasterCard International Incorporated card may be used everywhere. MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. Welcome back. Today's show is all about sharks and whether you should be scared to go in the water. So far, we've had our scary shark story, and we've been a bit creeped out by Shark Week. Now let's dive into the science. First up, we wanted to speak to a scientist who gets up close and personal with sharks. Stanford researcher Taylor Chapman, who studies great whites. And he says seeing them in the wild is exactly as cool as it sounds.

[Taylor Chapman]

Yeah, it's almost one of those things. You can't. You can't explain it. So you see it on TV and you're like, yeah, that's a big animal. But to be there in the water with them and seeing them in. In real life isn't. It's. It really is something special.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And even though there are hundreds of different species of sharks, the one that inspires legends is the great white. And a lot of this has to do with how they hunt and kill their prey, which really is impressive even to scientists. So Taylor described what happens when a great white hunts one of its favorite prey, the seal. The shark will often start by diving down deep into the water.

[Taylor Chapman]

So the sharks swim around. They're looking up, they're looking up. And then when they see a seal, that's the moment where they accelerate, and it's that split second where the seal has to be not paying attention. And the shark is making its approach from down deep, straight up.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So the shark is barreling through the water, and it's huge. Great whites can weigh like 2,500 kilos or more than 5,000 pounds. And they have all these features that help them move very fast. Like, even their skin has tiny little bumps that create little whirlpools in the water to reduce friction.

[Taylor Chapman]

It's like sandpaper, and it's really cool. It's one of these crazy, you know, adaptations.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah. So how fast can they swim? Like, top speed.

[Taylor Chapman]

So we have put accelerometers and speedometers on white sharks when they're going through these big bursts and so they can bust it up to about 25 miles an hour when they're going through those big explosions.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, wow.

[Taylor Chapman]

Which is pretty incredible. And that's in. In just a few tail beats.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah. With just a few flicks of the tail, they can go from cruising at about 1 mile an hour to 25 miles an hour. And at that moment, the shark goes into full blown attack mode. Sometimes these bursts are so powerful, you can actually see a shark's head coming out of the water. And meanwhile, to protect their eyes from a seal fighting back, their eyes roll back.

[Taylor Chapman]

And so at that point they're for all intents and purposes, blind.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And then when the shark gets close enough, chomp. The shark clamps down with teeth that really are shark week level scary.

[Taylor Chapman]

The teeth on the bottom of the jaw are sort of like fork tines. And then the top teeth are those really iconic white shark teeth that they're big, triangular, and they're serrated to sort of move back and forth in order to cut down through that prey.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow. So it really is like when you, like, grab a steak with the fork and then you, like, cut a little piece with a serrated knife. Like, that is the shark's mouth.

[Taylor Chapman]

Yeah, that's, that's what they're doing, which is. That's pretty cool.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And it's not just the teeth that the seal has to worry about. Great whites have these massively powerful muscles around their jaw, which scientists have estimated gives them one of the strongest bite forces in the animal, queendom. And sometimes it'll use those massive jaws to go for the head, chop it right off. Have you seen a shark decapitate a seal?

[Taylor Chapman]

I have. That part is. It's shocking to see, but it really is incredible seeing a predator doing its natural thing. You know, you're seeing one animal win and one animal lose.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So, yeah, the circle of life. Sharks are definitely a scary predator here, and they're also very cool. But a lot of what we hear about sharks goes way beyond this. They sound like almost mythical hunters. And one part of the myth that we wanted to explore was their sense of smell. That they can smell a drop of blood from far, far away. And this is something that surfer Mike was thinking, thinking about as he was actually being attacked. And you hear this a lot in movies and shark documentaries. You know that when sharks are on the hunt, the shark's most acute sense is activated smell. A great white, for instance, could sense a single drop of blood in an Olympic sized swimming pool. And we wanted to find out if this idea was true, if sharks really are that Good at smelling blood. So we sniffed out a researcher who really knows the science here.

[Tricia Meredith]

My name is Tricia Meredith, and I'm an assistant research professor at Florida Atlantic University, and I study the sense of smell of sharks and their relatives.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And Tricia told us that this idea of sharks as amazing smellers doesn't just come from Shark Week, like academics think.

[Tricia Meredith]

It's true even in the scientific literature. You'll get papers. Swimming noses. Sharks are the swimming noses of the sea.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Tricia said this idea that sharks are super smellers emerged because people out fishing noticed something weird when they threw fish blood and guts into the water as bait. Sharks would belly up to the boat pretty quickly. Plus, we know that sharks have these huge organs in their heads to help them smell.

[Tricia Meredith]

So it's this really beautiful, complicated labyrinth of tissue inside the nose.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, wow. I just googled it. It looks like a little bit like a vagina.

[Tricia Meredith]

That's funny. Yeah, I could see the comparison.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Despite the signs pointing to super smelling, Tricia said there were hardly any studies that had actually tested if sharks really were star sniffers. So she decided to get her hands on some sharks to find out. First step, Tricia goes fishing and catches some lemon sharks.

[Tricia Meredith]

Then you bag them up like they're giant, live tropical fish that you got from the pet store into these giant bags with seawater pumped full of oxygen. And you transport them in a truck up to our marine lab.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow. And then you drive a truck full of sharks across the state. I don't think I've ever heard of anything more Floridian. Assuming she doesn't get pulled over, Trish gets the animals back to the lab. She'll set them up in a special tank. And. And using a technique that's worked in a bunch of animals, she'll put these brave sharks through the smelling challenge of a lifetime. Cue the Snark week music. Perfect. Okay, so to find out if these sharks are truly the noses of the ocean, Tricia has to get up close and personal with these fearsome fish. She's about to to stick electrodes up their nose.

[Tricia Meredith]

So what the electrode does is it's recording voltage inside the nose.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Generally speaking, when a shark smells something like blood, its neurons get excited. And back at the lab, Tricia takes advantage of this. She sets up a screen which can actually see that change in voltage.

[Tricia Meredith]

So you see this little dip.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Tricia and her team squirt odors into the shark's nose to see what the neurons can pick up their arsenal. They're using amino acids, which are the Building blocks of basically every smell out there. Including blood.

[Tricia Meredith]

Sure. Definitely. Yeah. There are amino acids in blood, and.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

They squirt these smells into the shark noses at lower and lower concentrations to.

[Tricia Meredith]

See how low they can go. Can they still detect it? Do we still see a response?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Did Trish's sharks pass the ultimate smell test? Could they smell a drop of blood in an Olympic sized swimming pool?

[Tricia Meredith]

The short answer is no.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's right. The answer is. Wait, what was that?

[Tricia Meredith]

Can they smell a drop of that odor in an Olympic sized swimming pool? The answer is no. Sharks are not sensitive enough to detect that concentration. So we kind of busted that myth.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay, enough snark week. Back to science verses. So when Tricia looked at her findings, she saw that the sharks she tested were about as good at smelling as other fish in the ocean. Like they were as good as salmon. What a fish. Slap in the face. Now, Tricia only tested a couple of shark species, no great whites, but she reckons that what she found applies to other types of sharks as well.

[Tricia Meredith]

We like to paint them as very special, but, you know, they're actually just fish. I know it's a little, like, boring, but they're fish.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay, so sharks don't have supernatural smelling skills. They can't sniff us out any better than a salmon could. They're fish, but they are fish with a hell of a bite. So our next question is, if you get in the water and a shark is nearby, will they go for you to find out, we found ourselves a great white shark. To be the judge, Ruth Bader Finsburg. What was that, Ruth? Sorry, I can't, I can't. Hmm. Okay, not helpful. Well, if we can't talk to a great white, let's turn to the next best thing, a shark scientist. And back to Taylor Chappell from Stanford University. Hey, Taylor.

[Taylor Chapman]

Hey, how's it going?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So Taylor told us that if sharks loved eating humans, then you would expect that basically every time we're in the water near a shark, they would try to take a cheeky bite.

[Taylor Chapman]

So that's the funny thing is that's not necessarily the case.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Scientists in Australia and South Africa have observed great white sharks and bull sharks swimming near hundreds of people. And they just don't go after them. Taylor has seen this too, when he goes tagging great whites near an island called Ano Nuevo in California.

[Taylor Chapman]

And about a half a mile from, or not even a half a mile from where I work is a surf spot. So I'll have a day where there'll be 6, 7, 8 up to 15 sharks swimming around my boat at one time, and I can see a half mile away the guys in the lineup surfing. And no one has ever been attacked at that spot. So if those sharks wanted to eat us, there would be very few surfers left in the water.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Many scientists told us that people and sharks often swim in the same waters, and yet we hardly ever get attacked. Like, millions of people hit the beach each year, and yet only 60 to 100 get bitten by sharks each year worldwide. And on average only six people are killed. Six.

[Taylor Chapman]

You're way more likely to be, you know, have a TV fall on you and die. You know, not very many people are terrified of walking past their televisions.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And this is all kind of weird, right? Like you would think that we would be a tasty treat for sharks. So why aren't they going after us all the time? Well, until we learn to communicate with sharks like Roose, Bader, Finsburg, it's hard to know for sure. But we do know that for millions of years, sharks have been eating marine animals, not weird hairless apes who are bad swimmers. And we know that the animals sharks are regularly going for are made of different stuff to us. Like, for example, seals are chock full of blubber.

[Taylor Chapman]

The blubber of a marine mammal is just like, you know, one of those power bars. It's just packed full of energy and what the animal needs on top of this.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

We often have this idea that sharks will eat just about anything that swims in their crosshairs. But new research is starting to show a totally different picture. Turns out sharks aren't mindless killing machines.

[Taylor Chapman]

They're figuring out exactly what they want, and that's the only thing they're going after. They're being very discerning.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Taylor told us about some surprising footage that he caught when he strapped a camera to the back of a great white.

[Taylor Chapman]

You see a silhouette at the surface. You see the shark go from a couple miles an hour, burst speed up to 20 some miles an hour. At the last second, right before it gets to that unassuming silhouette at the surface, it bails. And it turns out that the silhouette at the surface was a bird and not a seal.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It looks like when the shark got close, it realized this dinky bird just wasn't worth it. And newer research in tiger sharks is showing basically the same thing, that most of the time sharks don't go around chomping everything they see at every opportunity. They're making some sort of calculation about what's worth the effort. And it seems that in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases, humans, you and me, we're not worth it for them. And by the way, if you are one of the very, very, very, very unlucky people who do get bit by a shark, there's a little bit of science that can help you. One study of over 500 shark attacks done in the 1970s found that poking a shark in the eye was one of the best things you could do to fight it off. This does leave one big question bobbing on the surface, though. What do we know about these odd sharks that do go after people? Like that one that sunk its teeth into Mike's arm. What's up with those sharks? Are they different somehow? Are there sharks who have developed a taste for human flesh? That's coming up after the break. You know that feeling when someone shows up for you just when you need it most? That's what Uber is all about. Not just a ride or dinner at your door. It's how Uber helps you show up for the moments that matter. Because showing up can turn a tough day around or make a good one even better. Whatever it is, big or small, Uber is on the way. So you can be on yours. Uber on our way. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want is a great feeling. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state. Welcome back. We just learned that shark attacks are super rare. Like TV falling on you rare. But they do sometimes happen. So we wanted to find out more about these attacks because even though they're rare, they're also very scary. They even scare shark researchers like Dr. Chris Pepper Neff, who's at the University of Sydney. And Chris recently went scuba diving around Cape Town, where great whites are known to frolic.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

I'm swimming across the water and I'm like, I know the statistics. I know I'm very unlikely to run into a shark and thinking, oh, you know, I can do this as a rational human being. And then I start flailing. I ran. I ran out of rationality. I started screaming to the boat guy pretty early, like, get me out of the water, Chris.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Like, almost everyone who goes into the water was absolutely fine.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

Yeah, it wasn't my shining moment of being a shark researcher, but we called.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Up Chris not Because we wanted to hear about his holiday, but because we wanted to know why the odd shark does bite a human. And he told us about one idea that's been floating around since at least the 1950s, and it's called rogue shark theory.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

There are rogue sharks that get a taste for human blood, and they're the ones you really need to be concerned about.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This idea basically says that there are certain sharks, bad apples, who move into an area, bite one person, get a taste for it, and then they start hunting and biting more and more people. The guy who came up with this was a respected doctor and researcher, and in 1950, he wrote in a scientific journal that a rogue shark quote must be hunted until it is destroyed. And if this sounds familiar, it is as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

That story, the rogue shark story, is really personified in the movie Jaws.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So the shark in Jaws is the quintessential rogue shark, and it captured our imagination.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

I remember laying on the floor like I had this giant bowl of popcorn and the shark comes out of the water and I flew and so did the bowl of popcorn. It went flying across the room and I was screaming.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Chris told us that after Jaws came out, you start seeing this idea of rogue shark theory all over the place. Like Shark Week went wild on it. Is this a rogue with a taste for human flesh?

[Chris Pepper Neff]

Rogue shark theory is still being touted by people today. Every, every beach I go to when there's a shark bite, they'll say it was a rogue shark.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So, decades after this idea was first suggested, what do we know about rogue sharks? Can this theory explain why the odd person gets bitten? Well, if it were true, then a lot of shark attacks should be caused by the same shark. You know, the bad apples, the rogues. And is that what we find? Luckily, scientists have been systematically tracking shark attacks for about half a century, and they can't find these rampant rogues chomping their way through the database. In fact, in all that time, there's only been one case where scientists agree that the same shark bit more than one person.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

That's the reality. So what we end up with is a much less sensationalized story.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So let's go a little deeper on this less sensationalized story. If there were so called rogue sharks, you'd expect them to make a meal out of every person they bite, you know, because they love the taste of human flesh. But surprisingly, that's not what happens. Studies of shark bites have found that in the vast majority of cases, sharks will bite a person once and then leave them. They don't stick around to eat them. Which kind of remarkably is why most people who are bitten by sharks actually end up biting better off than our surfer Mike. Here's Chris again.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

I spent a decade researching this and there's no evidence to support the rogue shark theory. There are no such thing as rogue sharks. There is something else entirely going on here.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Nowadays, scientists generally think that when sharks do bite people, it's probably not because the shark actually wanted to eat a person, but rather they're confusing us for maybe stuff like seals or, or perhaps they're freaked out by people in the water and they get defensive. And while Chris says we can never really know what motivates a wild animal, it's obvious that Hollywood sharks are working off a totally different script. Like producer Rose Rimler talked to Chris about what the Jaws shark was getting up to.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

I mean, it's terrorizing the public. It's picking on little kids, it's picking on the over sexualized girl. It's judgy, you know, the shark's a total asshole. That's not shark behavior, that's horror movie behavior.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, that's classic slasher movie.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

That's classic slasher movie and it's all false.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Still though, from the evidence we have, generally speaking, sharks aren't interested in eating us. But the ironic thing is that we are very interested in eating sharks. We eat a ton of sharks, actually 100,000 tons of shark a year at least. People often shake their fists at shark finning and shark fin soup, which is a delicacy in parts of Asia. But people actually eat shark meat all over the world. Like in the UK and Australia you can buy shark meat with your chips. You can also get shark meat in the us on top of that, we're scooping up a lot of sharks that we don't even want to eat. It happens by accident. Because of industrialized fishing, it turns out the mighty shark is actually quite vulnerable.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

They're very easy to catch in the open ocean and so they end up being a lot of bycatch. And rather than throw the fish back, which they might do sometimes, more often than not, they don't.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

All of these pressures have created a sort of perfect sharknado. And these days, one quarter of all shark species and their relatives are threatened with extinction. One quarter. And that includes a lot of puny looking sharks that don't get a lot of attention, but it also includes the great white.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

You know, it's a very tragic, very difficult situation.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

We don't Know exactly what will go wrong if we lose more sharks. But from everything we do know about how food webs work, we can see that when we lose predators, it has trickle down effects. For example, lose the wolves in Yellowstone and we got overrun with elk. And so bottom line, Chris says sharks are important and we really should stop hating on them.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

It's our responsibility to try to weed through this fake bull. And it's not that sharks are perfect, sharks still bite people, but the whole whole picture of what sharks are is yet to be told.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Well, until now. So when it comes to sharks as super predators, the John Wicks of the sea, does this idea stack up? Well, sharks are definitely amazing hunters, but no, they can't sniff a drop of blood from far away. And considering how many millions of people go into waters where sharks are hanging out and yet don't get bitten, it does seem like sharks aren't out for human flesh. They prefer marine life. So bottom line, sharks aren't total assholes. They're just big cool fish. And the truth is, we're more of a threat to them than they are to us. Every researcher we spoke to is annoyed by this killer shark mythology that just won't die. And they're working very hard to undo the work of JAWS and Shark Week. By the way, we reached out to those at Shark Week and they told us that they contribute to shark research and conservation. Despite all their efforts, our researchers all said that sharks need an image makeover. You know, a rebrand like Taylor who studies great whites, told us that he and his mates are now taking the great out of their name.

[Taylor Chapman]

Rather than this really sort of scary great white shark, we just talk about him as a white shark.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Trisha, who did the smelling study, thinks that the shark bite needs a pivot.

[Tricia Meredith]

She wants to call it a light mouthing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You got that? A light mouthing.

[Tricia Meredith]

Can you tell that I'm team shark?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Even Mike, our surfer who was bitten by a shark has his own termination terminology.

[Mike Wells]

It's just having a little nibble. Yeah, I've got no issues with Bruce.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Bruce, you named your.

[Mike Wells]

Yeah, I've given him a name.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Bruce.

[Mike Wells]

Yeah, he's doing his thing, I'll do mine.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And perhaps the guy with the grandest plan to give sharks a bit of a glow up is Chris.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

Sharks have been demonized. And when I do my musical flaws, the musical, it's gonna be, you know, like wicked. It's gonna be like wicked. And the shark is gonna be the star of the musical. And the shark starts singing, you know, defying Gravity and whatever it is.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Do you have any songs ready to go?

[Chris Pepper Neff]

Oh, I'm working on them. I've already bought flawsthemusical.com.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Rose? Yeah? Should we help him out a little? I think so. I know you people are scared of me, but I'm not the one to blame. You saw Jaws as a child and now you. You think I maim. But I need to eat sometimes and even if you're on the beach I'll choose a seal for food Roll back my eyes and breath Or I might try to bite a mouse but human flesh, it's just not my cup of tea so I won't pull you down Sharky I find that hard to believe. Dolphinder, haven't you been listening to anything? You really don't want to eat humans? No, I just want to fight a manatee or maybe. But human flesh, it's really just not what I'm into. So I won't pull you down. That's science versus sharks. All right, so we're back to our regular job. This is actually our last episode of the season. We'll be back in September. Stick around for a fun walk down memory lane after the credits. But first, it's time for the citations. Can't believe we're at this moment. How many citations in this week's episode? Producer Rose Rimler. Host, Swanny Zuckerman. There's over 120 citations. Whoa. That may be a like a record. That's a lot of shark information out there. There's a lot of shark information and if people want to read this shark information, where should they go? They can click on the link in our show notes and it'll take them to the transcript with all the citations. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. This episode was produced by Rose Frimler with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Meryl Horn and Michelle Dang. Our senior producer is Caitlin Sorey. We're edited by Blythe Terrell and this week with help from Caitlin Sorey. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. A huge thanks to the amazing team of musicians that helped us with floors and our snark week music led by Peter Leonard along with Bobby Lord, Emma Munger and Marcus Thorne Bagola. Recording assistance from Carolyn Perryman, Shannon Cason, Sam Turkin, Beth McMullen and Jesse Wentzlaff. A big thanks to George burgess, Peter Pyle, Dr. David Shiffman, Professor Peter Klimley, Professor Yella Atoma, Professor Stefan Kajura, Dr. Blake Chapman, Ninka Dehas and many more. Thank you so much. Plus, a special thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. And so here it is, our little montage of the season that was. And do you want to know what a baby alligator sounds like? That's exactly what I want to know. A baby goes. Somebody at the company was doing a job, and I mean, literally, they were, like, taking. Semen is a.

[Chris Pepper Neff]

Is a viscous substance. It's like the cheese on the top of a pizza.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Thanks for that image, by the way. Wonderful.

[Tricia Meredith]

It looks like a green, gloppy, slimy goo.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That was the thing. I was completely flummoxed. I said, my God, it's a jail. The surgeons would literally have buckets of pus that they would collect from patients who would just ooze just tons of pus. Why can't I just bring you up on feminist charges of. No. Possession of a specular. Moody and emotional. And I just need some goddamn sugar in my face. Honestly. Let's put the wrong end of the.

[Tricia Meredith]

Pipette into the bottle.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I'm gonna have the sperm juice on my hand. Okay. Wow. All right, so I'm gonna. Let's give it a go. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Thank you so much for listening.

[Tricia Meredith]

Will.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Back to you in September.