My Favorite Is The Tiger Shark

It's here again.

For all Vaguely Indie and Quasi Scene Kids across the country, the Discovery Channel's Shark Week is the year's best seven days of television. That's just the way it is. The only possible way I could conceive of ever topping the excitement and fervor over Shark Week is if a network ever aired something along the lines of Zombie Week, or Dinosaur Week, or something remotely similar. Right now, I'm watching the special shark-centric episode of Mythbusters. They're doing the first myth right now:

When adrift at sea, does playing dead -- as opposed to thrashing around wildly -- discourage sharks from attacking?

This one seemed pretty obvious to me.

After working a pack of sharks (they didn't specify exactly which species it was, but judging from my expert eye, they appeared to be some kind of Coral Reef shark) into a frenzy with chum bait, Tory and Grant jumped into the water. One stayed perfectly still while the other wriggled around like a wounded fish; then, to cover all bases, they switched roles. The results were conclusive: the sharks habitually showed more interest in the live bait, while completely ignoring the dead bait.

That sounds about exactly right.

All of that is just hundreds of millions of years of instinct. As a predatory species, it's in their nature to go give chase to something that's more alive (i.e. hunting) instead of simply picking at something that appears to be less alive (i.e. scavenging). It's no different than a dog that takes off after a car as it drives by, or better yet, the T-Rex that initially ignored that tethered goat in Jurassic Park -- their hard-wired to react that way. So the fact that this myth was confirmed really doesn't say much...what did say much, however, was the loophole in their experiment that they conveniently glossed over.

The transmitted waves that a shark can detect are typically physical in nature (that is, the tangible rippling waves caused by thrashing the water) and also electrical (like a heart rate, for example). Even if a castaway stayed perfectly still -- and that's assuming he even has a life vest or some kind of flotation device; if not, he's obviously gonna be kicking his legs like crazy just to stay afloat -- it would make very little difference if his heart was beating out of his chest. Regardless of what the rest of your body may be doing, an accelerated heart rate will transmit through the ocean, which will bring attention to a shark, with will then (potentially) lead to an exploratory bite.

In this experiment, they were able to "play dead" (generally keeping their wits about them and avoiding cardiac explosion) because of the peace of mind of knowing that this is a controlled environment with multiple safety measures set into place to keep them from harm. In a non-experiment, they wouldn't have the same safety net. I'm sure their vitals spiked considerably during their time in the water, but I guarantee they'd spike three times as bad if this were for real. So as is sometimes the case with Mythbusters, there findings hold some scientific merit, but very little value for real-life, practical use. Basically, one would have to suffer a full-on heart attack to even begin to fool a shark into thinking he were dead.

There are a lot of other myths they're covering in this episode, but I'm already getting tired. It's gonna be a long week, anyway. There'll be a lot of time to get to them later.