Shark Attack
by
Marianna Kommata
The first sharks appeared on earth about 400 million years ago. Today there are more than 360 known species of sharks. What makes sharks so different from another fish is that their skeletons are made of cartilage, not bone. Their skin is covered with denticles and they have five to seven gill slits per side.
A shark lives for less than 25 years but until his last day he doesn't stop growing. Think that the whale shark is the largest fish in the world, measuring up to 50 feet long. The average swimming speed of a shark is about a yard per second but there are species that can attain speeds approaching 20 mph or even more. The greatest force of a shark bite ever recorded measured 132 pounds of force between the jaws of a dusky shark.
Reading above it seems that humans are an easy meal for a shark, but is it true?
Every year there are about 100 shark attacks to humans with a 28% of fatalities. So you think shark is dangerous?
No, we are dangerous. The number of sharks killed by fishers each year is 30 to 100 million making 80 shark species threatened with extinction.
But how do sharks detect their meal? A shark uses its six senses to detect the meal and find its exact location. If the victim knew how the shark uses these senses, maybe it could do something. They strike with no warning and little chance of escape. A shark can consume a four hundred pound meal in ten immense bites of up to fifty pounds each.
Surfers are more vulnerable to great white sharks than anyone else in the water. As they skim the surface of the waves, underneath them, sharks may be lurking. But their presence here may have little to do with seeking human prey. Many of the best surfing beaches are near the breeding colonies of seals and sea lions (seals and sea lions are the favourite meals of the white shark).
In fifty years, there have been fewer than eighty attacks on humans in California, only seven fatal. With so many people in the water, it's surprising there haven't been more. Perhaps the attacks that do take place are cases of mistaken identity. A surfer paddling out to sea, may look like a seal. But even if they look like the favorite food of great whites, surfers don't taste the same. Compared to an elephant seal, a human body mustn't be so tasty.
JoAnne Altsman, 57, of Beaver Falls, Pittsburgh, began having a heart attack in her holiday trailer on Presque Isle in Erie, Pennsylvania, on 4 August 1998. Her American Eskimo dog, Bear, did nothing but bark and break a bedroom window; but LuLu, her Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, rose to the occasion.
Mopsy The Rabbit, a two-year-old Orange Rex doe, landed a burglar in court after raising the alarm by frantically thumping with her foot during a break-in at her owners' house in Fetcham, Surrey, on 30 June.
Viewers watching the last 12 minutes of a televised Castle Premiership football match between the Moroka Swallows and Jomo Cosmos in the George Gogh Stadium, Johannesburg, saw a group of players collapse suddenly after being struck by lightning.
An unnamed pensioner called the Meteorological Office at Bracknell on 4 March to inform them that an early-morning shower over her house in Shirley, Croydon, south London, had been accompanied by a large number of dead frogs, which were scattered over her garden, her neighbour's house, and nearby streets.
Whatever devastated the terrestrial environments 65 million years ago and exterminated the dinosaurs, it failed to force into extinction the ultimate survivors, the Crocodiles.
The first sharks appeared on earth about 400 million years ago. Today there are more than 360 known species of sharks.