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Great White Shark am not serial killer; me am puppy!
I object to this salacious headline for three reasons. One, this isn't exactly news. You have some hundreds of millions of years in which sharks have evolved to be perfect predators. If they survived on randomly chomping at prey, they would never have made it this long. And speaking of evolution, the great white is superbly adapted for stalk-and-kill predation both because of its speed and force but also because of its coloring. The distinctive white belly and dark dorsal skin of the great white allows it to hide from prey at any depth--seals looking down from above will lose the shark's dark top side in the gloomy dark of the deeper ocean; seals looking up at sun-lit waters see the white belly. It's very easy to lose the great white shark, visually. I wrote a paper on this for my vertebrate zoology class, and I've swum with sharks--not great whites, alas--so trust me on this. But if you can't, rest assured none of this is news to anyone who is actually paid to study sharks. (Lucky bastards.)
Two, other animals do this all the time and don't get called Hannibal Lector for it. Tigers are probably the best example of great stalkers who are also notable for their particular camouflage. Tigers are deliberate and deadly hunters, and they are frequently demonized, but I don't remember anyone making direct connections between a tiger and Ted Bundy. (Maybe I haven't been reading the right material.)
And three, it's a mistake to personify animals. Period. I do it all the time with my kitties, but I am not in the profession of studying my cats and writing papers about their behaviors (contrary to what it might seem like from some of my LJ posts).
I really dislike this tendency of articles to make bold claims in headlines that they then subsequenty dismantle in the actual article. It's worse when they don't take apart such bullshit, but really, is it such a slow news day that we have to go "THINGS ARE DIFFERENT LIKE CRAZY ZOMG!" and then write an article that admits, "Actually, everything's fine, nothing to see here"?? This is just to drive up click-generated profits, isn't it?
I object to this salacious headline for three reasons. One, this isn't exactly news. You have some hundreds of millions of years in which sharks have evolved to be perfect predators. If they survived on randomly chomping at prey, they would never have made it this long. And speaking of evolution, the great white is superbly adapted for stalk-and-kill predation both because of its speed and force but also because of its coloring. The distinctive white belly and dark dorsal skin of the great white allows it to hide from prey at any depth--seals looking down from above will lose the shark's dark top side in the gloomy dark of the deeper ocean; seals looking up at sun-lit waters see the white belly. It's very easy to lose the great white shark, visually. I wrote a paper on this for my vertebrate zoology class, and I've swum with sharks--not great whites, alas--so trust me on this. But if you can't, rest assured none of this is news to anyone who is actually paid to study sharks. (Lucky bastards.)
Two, other animals do this all the time and don't get called Hannibal Lector for it. Tigers are probably the best example of great stalkers who are also notable for their particular camouflage. Tigers are deliberate and deadly hunters, and they are frequently demonized, but I don't remember anyone making direct connections between a tiger and Ted Bundy. (Maybe I haven't been reading the right material.)
And three, it's a mistake to personify animals. Period. I do it all the time with my kitties, but I am not in the profession of studying my cats and writing papers about their behaviors (contrary to what it might seem like from some of my LJ posts).
I really dislike this tendency of articles to make bold claims in headlines that they then subsequenty dismantle in the actual article. It's worse when they don't take apart such bullshit, but really, is it such a slow news day that we have to go "THINGS ARE DIFFERENT LIKE CRAZY ZOMG!" and then write an article that admits, "Actually, everything's fine, nothing to see here"?? This is just to drive up click-generated profits, isn't it?
