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Speaker 6: Oh hey, it's your wife. As of three days ago
Speaker 6: this year, Ali Ward is a married lady. Things have
Speaker 6: been a little bananas this week. My husband, Jarrett, and
Speaker 6: I had changed our wedding venue less than a week
Speaker 6: before the ceremony to something outdoors, ordered a bunch of
Speaker 6: COVID tests ahead of time for extra safety. So this
Speaker 6: week I am going to continue my semi time off
Speaker 6: to deliver a fan favorite episode on this the annual
Speaker 6: Shark Week. Love this episode, Pass it far and wide.
Speaker 6: There's a few extra tidbits. Also, I just might be
Speaker 6: trying to make a bonus minieso this week as well.
Speaker 6: I know I'm supposed to be off, but I can't resist.
Speaker 6: I think you're gonna like it anyway. Make sure you're
Speaker 6: subscribed and check your podcast app. Okay Onward. Oh hey,
Speaker 6: it's your two talkative petticab driver who you really guessed
Speaker 6: your astrological sign. It's Ali Ward back with another fresh
Speaker 6: as hell episode of Ologies. This is the quickest turnaround
Speaker 6: ever in the history of the show ever, and I
Speaker 6: guess given its oceanic vibe, I like to think of
Speaker 6: it as some treasure that washed up on the beach,
Speaker 6: delivered to your senses while it's still shimmering with sea
Speaker 6: froth before it starts to stink. Now, I have been
Speaker 6: tracking this ologist for months and he was always off
Speaker 6: on expeditions in remote corners of the Earth being awesome.
Speaker 6: And we had an appointment to talk sharks last Friday,
Speaker 6: and then I realized, boy howdy, this week is Shark week.
Speaker 6: This is perfect timing. I don't mean shark week like
Speaker 6: anything uterine, It's actually Shark week on Discovery and nat
Speaker 6: Gio has a Shark week. And then he had to
Speaker 6: cancel because of work stuff. It's fair enough. But then
Speaker 6: he said he could record just hours before I got
Speaker 6: on a plane. So I drove my ass Giddaly down
Speaker 6: to Long Beach and I hung out in his lab
Speaker 6: and I'm now back home. I'm turning around asides. I'm
Speaker 6: having the amazing Stephen Ray Morris edit this in probably
Speaker 6: a red Bull induced mania. Honestly, we couldn't be happier
Speaker 6: about it. It's very exciting. But before we get to
Speaker 6: the episode, some thanks, and some please and some thanks again.
Speaker 6: So first off, thanks to the patrons for making this
Speaker 6: whole show happen pretty much. At patreon dot com slash Ologies,
Speaker 6: you can be a member of the club that knows
Speaker 6: what episodes are coming up next and submits questions to
Speaker 6: the ologists and sees behind the scenes photos from their labs.
Speaker 6: And also you help keep the pod free and available
Speaker 6: to all. You can also support by putting Ologies on
Speaker 6: your human body. You can go to ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 6: You can also support with no coin at all, just
Speaker 6: by subscribing. You can review or rate, you can tweet
Speaker 6: about it, you tell your dentist, whatever. Also, as you know,
Speaker 6: I creepily read your reviews and then I prove it
Speaker 6: each week by reading you on this week, Fantasy Football
Speaker 6: Gal says, help, now I have an Ologies addiction. Guys,
Speaker 6: I can't stop with this podcast. Send help or don't,
Speaker 6: actually please don't and leave me to keep bathing my
Speaker 6: mind in Ologies. So nice, So, she says she got
Speaker 6: hooked after listening to the two parter on fearology, which
Speaker 6: resulted in a four hour long post episode discussion on
Speaker 6: the topic with my mom, herself a psychologist, So thank
Speaker 6: you for that. Okay, now back to silacka mophrology. I
Speaker 6: know it sounds like your drunk cousin add a bunch
Speaker 6: of scrabble letters and is doing her best to convince
Speaker 6: everyone that it's a triple word score, but really it's
Speaker 6: a term. It's a rare one, but it exists. So
Speaker 6: it comes from the ancient Greek four having the appearance
Speaker 6: of cartilaginous fish. And what does it mean to me
Speaker 6: is we've got a shark spurt in the house. What
Speaker 6: a shark expert he is. So he's been studying sharks
Speaker 6: for decades. He's appeared on so many TV shows about
Speaker 6: sharks it's absurd. And he's been a marine biology professor
Speaker 6: at cal State University Long Beach for twenty years. He's tall, slim,
Speaker 6: with close cropped hair and what I imagine is a
Speaker 6: perennial tan. He greeted me this past Sunday today, the
Speaker 6: day I'm recording this, and he showed me around the
Speaker 6: shark lab. This is a facility of these gurgling seawater
Speaker 6: tanks and high tech telemetry devices cameras, and suspended in
Speaker 6: the rafters as a nod to the past, was a
Speaker 6: vintage shark shaped submersible. It was amazing. So we sat
Speaker 6: down in his tidy office and I asked him all
Speaker 6: kinds of stupid shit, and he answered with affable wisdom.
Speaker 6: So get ready to deep dive into a world of
Speaker 6: ancient badasses, eye lasers, behind the scenes, movie trivia, inside
Speaker 6: out butts, cannibal twins, seeming immortality, They're sea kink, surfer intuition,
Speaker 6: lottery odds, and your aquatic many toothed new role models
Speaker 6: during this their week, Shark Week with selackimorphologist doctor Chris Lowe.
Speaker 7: It's actually the worst week. It's great in that we
Speaker 7: celebrate charts. Yeah, just we celebrate them this sometimes.
Speaker 6: So here's your mic and these are stage mics. So yep,
Speaker 6: just got it talking to it, and yeah, thank you
Speaker 6: for doing this this week of all weeks, is this
Speaker 6: your Is this week your nightmare? It's Shark week, your nightmare.
Speaker 7: So I was quoted in an article recently saying shark
Speaker 7: we is like my Christmas. Actually, it's more like my
Speaker 7: Halloween so so, so it's great in one way, and
Speaker 7: that people are celebrating sharks and they're very excited about sharks,
Speaker 7: and that's something that I find great. However, the Halloween
Speaker 7: part comes from the horror that's also partly created in
Speaker 7: that same kind of tone. So, you know, it makes
Speaker 7: it really difficult to educate people about sharks and to
Speaker 7: help dispel some of the myths about them when we
Speaker 7: still do a lot of fear mongering in some of
Speaker 7: the media. So it's it's it's really challenging. I'll give
Speaker 7: you an example. So here I am on a Discovery
Speaker 7: Channel show talking about why shark conservation is so important,
Speaker 7: sharks are vital to the ecosystem and why people need
Speaker 7: to protect them, and in the background here did it?
Speaker 7: Did it? Did?
Speaker 6: It?
Speaker 7: Just doesn't match right? So it comes very frustrating and
Speaker 7: a little conflicting for the public to understand. Well, wait
Speaker 7: a minute, is it about conservation or are we supposed
Speaker 7: to be scared?
Speaker 6: And so what made you love sharks so much? What
Speaker 6: was the moment where you're like, sharks, I'm on your team.
Speaker 7: So, you know, as a person who grew up fishing
Speaker 7: and loving to fish and I caught thousands of fish.
Speaker 7: The first one I caught, the first shark I caught,
Speaker 7: I was like, this is different. There's something about this,
Speaker 7: This is very different from all the other fish I'd catch.
Speaker 7: And it actually forced me to go to the library.
Speaker 7: I was not a good student, I hear to school.
Speaker 6: Really, how old were you when you went and started
Speaker 6: looking into it?
Speaker 7: Probably about nine, really, nine or ten. And then I
Speaker 7: went to the library and I remember finding a book
Speaker 7: about sharks and trying to figure out what kind of
Speaker 7: shark this was. And then I was looking through this
Speaker 7: book and I'm like, oh my god, there's all these
Speaker 7: cool things about these animals, like fish, but they're a
Speaker 7: different type of fish, and there was just something about
Speaker 7: that that just sucked me in.
Speaker 6: Is it crazy to you that you get to do
Speaker 6: this for a living? Like you're one of the leading
Speaker 6: shark experts in the world, Like do you drop your
Speaker 6: name and people are like, oh, oh, doctor Christen, Yeah
Speaker 6: he's legit. Like is it crazy to you that you're
Speaker 6: that dude?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 7: Yes, I have to pinch myself every day. But part
Speaker 7: of it is I am so lucky to have the
Speaker 7: job that I have. I really am. I absolutely love
Speaker 7: what I do, and it's not just about the sharks.
Speaker 7: It's about teaching other people about sharks and teaching other
Speaker 7: people about science and why we do it.
Speaker 6: So doctor Lowe grew up off the coast in New
Speaker 6: England in a family of working class, honest, cool fishermen.
Speaker 6: He told me his favorite day was Wednesday because it
Speaker 6: was a hamburger night. All other nights were seafood nights,
Speaker 6: because that's just what his family did, and that's what
Speaker 6: they expected him to do, just be a commercial fisherman
Speaker 6: or a carpenter. But he really wanted to study marine biology,
Speaker 6: and he became the first person in his family to
Speaker 6: graduate college, getting a bachelor's in marine bio in Rhode Island,
Speaker 6: a master's in biology in Long Beach, and then his
Speaker 6: PhD studying hammerhead sharks in Hawaii, which sounds like something
Speaker 6: only the guy in those Dozeki's commercials to do, but
Speaker 6: it's a real life and he lived it hammerhead sharks
Speaker 6: in Hawaii, Okay. And so when it comes to shark outreach,
Speaker 6: what do you think is the most important thing that
Speaker 6: you do? Because that is one thing I feel like
Speaker 6: humanity can get behind. It's like if there is a villain.
Speaker 6: We can all be scared of and pissed at. It's
Speaker 6: gonna be sharks. Like, we can't even be mad at
Speaker 6: bees anymore. We're like, ohside of the breeze. But no
Speaker 6: one's like, say the sharks. Everyone's like, let's kill all
Speaker 6: of them.
Speaker 7: Well, I think it's getting better. Okay, that's the exciting part.
Speaker 7: I think things are starting to change. It's just taken
Speaker 7: longer than I think many of us would have liked
Speaker 7: to see happen. And my best example are whales. Okay,
Speaker 7: so one hundred and fifty years ago, if we walked
Speaker 7: down like Sam Pedro, or we walked down New Bedford
Speaker 7: and you ask people what kind of animal they thought
Speaker 7: a whale was, they would say horrible things. Whales were.
Speaker 7: There are demons there, you know, all they're horrible animals.
Speaker 7: They killed people. Moby Dick. Right, So you think of
Speaker 7: the image portrayed in Mobi Dick.
Speaker 6: So, if like me, you have not yet gotten around
Speaker 6: to reading Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick, it's about this
Speaker 6: whale who was real angry, just a son of a bitch,
Speaker 6: And it was based on a real, actual albino whale
Speaker 6: by the name of Mocha Dick, who, despite sounding like
Speaker 6: your friend's barista ex boyfriend, was in fact a sperm
Speaker 6: whale and is said to have been a renown monster
Speaker 6: who evaded pursuers, was white as wool and just cruised
Speaker 6: the seas with nineteen harpoons hanging off of him like
Speaker 6: grass clippings on a sticky thigh. Didn't even notice. Now,
Speaker 6: for a long time people were like, get bent whales
Speaker 6: and their populations declined.
Speaker 7: Okay, so around the seventies, when whale populations were really
Speaker 7: in the tank, they got the perfect pr makeover. Whales
Speaker 7: went from being these demon evil animals to oh my god,
Speaker 7: they're like humans. They have babies, they nurse them, they're intelligent,
Speaker 7: social animals. And I thought, if we can do it
Speaker 7: for whales, why can't we do that for sharks. So
Speaker 7: I think that we're in that motion, we're heading in
Speaker 7: that direction, but it's really difficult when the a lot
Speaker 7: of the programming still pushes the fear factor.
Speaker 6: So Discoveries Shark Week, who is in no way sponsoring
Speaker 6: the show, has been this cable mainstay for like thirty years.
Speaker 6: They have shows like Bloodline, The Spawn of Jaws, and
Speaker 6: even a few years ago Ransom docu fiction aka fake
Speaker 6: news about the extinct Megalodon shark resurfacing, and later they
Speaker 6: were like, oh yeah, that was like not real, we thought,
Speaker 6: you know. Natt Geo has also joined the blood fun
Speaker 6: with two weeks of shark Fest. They have shows like
Speaker 6: Shark kill Zone and my personal favorite, Sharkatrez about the
Speaker 6: sharks near Alcatraz. Now, the point is whales cute and smart.
Speaker 6: Sharks are scary, steely eyed murderers. They're branded is like
Speaker 6: the sociopaths of the sea. Do you think that if
Speaker 6: sharks had eyelids their whole story would be better?
Speaker 7: Well, they do have islids, they do, yeah, of course
Speaker 7: some do.
Speaker 1: Some do.
Speaker 7: They're called little nick detating membranes, and they'll fold them
Speaker 7: up to protect their eyes. They just fold the wrong way.
Speaker 7: So maybe that's it. Maybe they look too alien to us.
Speaker 7: But I think that's only part of it, you know,
Speaker 7: Like dolphins have the cute little smile. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: if we can only get some sharks with cute little
Speaker 7: upturned jaws, maybe that would help. Don't say jaws, don't
Speaker 7: say joss. Yes, But I think, you know, part of
Speaker 7: it is being slowly demystified. People are starting to see
Speaker 7: sharks as being, you know, just like any other fish
Speaker 7: in the ocean, although they have a very different role
Speaker 7: than many other fish.
Speaker 6: So quick question, is a shark of fish? It is,
Speaker 6: but about four hundred million years ago they split off
Speaker 6: from bony fish and sharks. Instead of bone, they have
Speaker 6: a skeleton made of lightweight and springy cartilage. They also
Speaker 6: don't have swim bladders for buoyancy, but they use their
Speaker 6: fins kind of like airplane wings, and they have these
Speaker 6: real fatty, oily livers to keep them afloat. And they
Speaker 6: range in size from great white sharks more on that
Speaker 6: name later, which are like twenty feet in length, to
Speaker 6: these eighty bitty eight nine inch dwarf lantern sharks and
Speaker 6: Panama ghost cat sharks, which kind of both sound like
Speaker 6: D and D characters, But the point is they're not
Speaker 6: all the stuff of cinematic nightmares.
Speaker 7: So it's getting people to think along those lines.
Speaker 6: And do you think this all started with the franchise
Speaker 6: or have people been kind of demonizing sharks for you know,
Speaker 6: before the seventies.
Speaker 7: Well, actually, I think that our perception of sharks and
Speaker 7: that fear goes way back. It goes back to the
Speaker 7: way humans portray all predators. So you know, imagine back
Speaker 7: in the early cave days and the men would go
Speaker 7: out and hunt some wild animals and they would come
Speaker 7: back and tell these stories about these crazy, vicious animals
Speaker 7: they saw, and of course the families are sitting around
Speaker 7: listening to these stories are going, wow, that's so scaring.
Speaker 7: They're describing this animal, and the reality of it is
Speaker 7: people listen when people talk about that, because your brain
Speaker 7: gives you a little squirt of happy juice when you're scared.
Speaker 6: Happy juice aka adrenaline aka nor epinephrine is a hormone.
Speaker 6: It's gleaked out from your adrenal glands during fight or flight.
Speaker 6: So for more on this and why why fear is
Speaker 6: a very lucrative business, you can listen to the two
Speaker 6: part Ferology episode with Mary poffin Roth, who is a
Speaker 6: life changer. Okay, back to adrenaline.
Speaker 7: And it tells you to pay attention to characters that
Speaker 7: may be important for your survival. So, now what happens
Speaker 7: is if people don't encounter that animal, they can embellish
Speaker 7: the stories, right because the chances of that person ever
Speaker 7: seeing the animal themselves may be very low, and now
Speaker 7: the storytellers are getting rewarded because people are listening to them.
Speaker 7: So now they can embellish the stories. They can go
Speaker 7: on and on about the gnashing jaws and think about
Speaker 7: whalers and fishermen that were out to see for years,
Speaker 7: and they would come back and they would be telling
Speaker 7: these stories to their families, and their families are like,
Speaker 7: oh my god, these sharks sound horrible. But now as
Speaker 7: people began to see those animals more, as they begin
Speaker 7: to encounter them more, those things don't match. So you know,
Speaker 7: television's played off that, Jaws played off that. I mean,
Speaker 7: when you think about the book and the movie, you know,
Speaker 7: they're describing something that people were envisioning in their head right,
Speaker 7: and you only had to show a few pictures to
Speaker 7: help seal that deal. So the problem was is we
Speaker 7: knew very little about sharks at the time Jobs was written,
Speaker 7: and we've learned a lot more about sharks since then,
Speaker 7: so now it's getting a little harder to embellish the stories. Nonetheless,
Speaker 7: our brain is programmed to get a little squared happy
Speaker 7: juice when we're scared, so I think that's what makes
Speaker 7: it so hard to move away from sharks being these
Speaker 7: scary animals and convincing people that they're important and they're
Speaker 7: actually not as dangerous as they're made out to be.
Speaker 6: Hit me with some stats. We always hear that vending
Speaker 6: machines collect three hundred and eighty five people a year
Speaker 6: and sharks kill five.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah, so that those stats, there's tons of them
Speaker 7: out there. You know, you're more likely to dive in
Speaker 7: a car accident driving on the four or five going
Speaker 7: to the beach. Obviously in the parking lot, you're more
Speaker 7: likely to be run over by another driver than you
Speaker 7: would by encountering shark. So the thing is is it's
Speaker 7: an irrational fear, right, because the stats clearly tell us
Speaker 7: that the probability is crazy, crazy low. You have a
Speaker 7: better chance of winning the lottery than you do of
Speaker 7: being bitten by a shark.
Speaker 6: So side note, your odds of getting struck by lightning
Speaker 6: are just one in three thousand, getting injured by a
Speaker 6: toilet about one in ten thousand, now, death by sharks
Speaker 6: one in three point seven million, and well one in fifteen.
Speaker 6: Lottery tickets will win something. The odds for winning the
Speaker 6: good stuff like the Mega Million's jackpots you ready for
Speaker 6: this one in three hundred and two million, So way
Speaker 6: less likely than a shark attack, because like, winning actual
Speaker 6: money in the lottery is like nah, pretty much like
Speaker 6: kind of never.
Speaker 7: And that's with millions of people going to the beach
Speaker 7: and shark populations coming back in some places. So you know,
Speaker 7: it's kind of frustrating sometimes to put out those stats
Speaker 7: and then still have people go, I'm afraid to go
Speaker 7: with my pool. Really really I get that.
Speaker 6: Are people are afraid to go in their pool?
Speaker 7: Absolutely?
Speaker 6: Do they know there's no sharks in their pool? Or
Speaker 6: are those people who have sharks in their pool?
Speaker 7: No, I don't think they are sharks in their pool.
Speaker 7: It's that fear of water. It's the fear of being
Speaker 7: in water. And you know that adds another layer. We're
Speaker 7: a terrestrial animal, right, so when we go in the ocean,
Speaker 7: we're in a form place for many of us. And
Speaker 7: you know, it's interesting because many of the people water people,
Speaker 7: I call them these are surfers, divers, swimmers. They spend
Speaker 7: huge amounts of time in the ocean and they feel
Speaker 7: very comfortable in the ocean. You know, very few of
Speaker 7: them ever tell me they're afraid of sharks.
Speaker 6: Do you think that the people who are innately or
Speaker 6: feel innately afraid of sharks just are like scuba diving,
Speaker 6: not for me miniature golf? Sure, do you know what
Speaker 6: I mean? Do they self select?
Speaker 7: I think so, okay, But I think we can change that.
Speaker 7: Those are aspects of our behavior that we kind of
Speaker 7: put on ourselves.
Speaker 6: So is part of your role as a sharks burt
Speaker 6: if you will to give out enough facts so it
Speaker 6: counterbalances the fear.
Speaker 7: Well, I think that's an important part of it. So
Speaker 7: the more we learn about sharks and the more people
Speaker 7: begin to see them in a different way like they
Speaker 7: would see any other animal, like maybe a dog or
Speaker 7: a cat, or a mountain lion or anything like that.
Speaker 7: The more they know, the less they're going to fear.
Speaker 7: And we see that. I see it particularly in kids.
Speaker 7: I talk to thousands of kids every year because they're
Speaker 7: actually the best, so they quite often haven't developed that
Speaker 7: fear yet. And sharks and the new dinosaurs, so kids
Speaker 7: are really into sharks. Really.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I just know that sharks of the new dinosaurs,
Speaker 6: that's a new dinosaurs.
Speaker 7: And they're still here. Twenty years ago. I was really
Speaker 7: worried at the track we were taking that this there
Speaker 7: would be a generation of Americans that would enter our
Speaker 7: coastal ocean and never get to see a shark. And
Speaker 7: now I'm of excited that things are changing. There's a
Speaker 7: really good chance that this generation will be able to
Speaker 7: go in the ocean and actually see a shark in
Speaker 7: the wild.
Speaker 6: I love it. For you, that's like amazing good news.
Speaker 7: But that's true.
Speaker 6: But that's exciting.
Speaker 7: It really is. It really is because imagine here's well,
Speaker 7: we'll think of it like you know, coming to La
Speaker 7: and going down Hollywood and seeing a movie star, Right,
Speaker 7: that's what it will be like. People will be like
Speaker 7: I was in the ocean. I saw dolphin ho hum,
Speaker 7: But I also saw a white chart that was freaking awesome.
Speaker 6: I love that because if you go in Hollywood Boulevard,
Speaker 6: chances are you are not going to see your favorite celebrity.
Speaker 6: You're gonna see a lot of other shit, but you're
Speaker 6: not gonna see anyone fair that rue. But when you
Speaker 6: think of sharks, what kind of place do they hold
Speaker 6: in your heart? Like, when you think of a shark,
Speaker 6: what key words come to your mind?
Speaker 7: You know, they're just amazing. I mean, they're amazing. They've
Speaker 7: been around for four hundred million years as a group, right,
Speaker 7: They've been They've seen the gnarly shit on the planet, right,
Speaker 7: I mean asteroids hitting the planet. They've been through all
Speaker 7: these mass extinctions and they come out the other end
Speaker 7: of the pipe and they're still around. That's amazing.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So you know, when you look at all the other
Speaker 7: life in the ocean, and during some of those mass extinctions,
Speaker 7: we lost over ninety percent of the marine life was gone.
Speaker 7: Really that much, huge, huge, huge extinction.
Speaker 6: Sharks are like, yeah, I'm still here. Are you like
Speaker 6: me now, bitch?
Speaker 7: So the question that I loved upon her is what
Speaker 7: is it about them that makes them so resilient? What
Speaker 7: makes them so adaptable? So, and those are the things
Speaker 7: they have, these characters either part of their physiology or
Speaker 7: their morphology that just seem amazing. And they're different from
Speaker 7: many of the other animals on the planet. So I
Speaker 7: think that's one of the things that just puts me
Speaker 7: in awe.
Speaker 6: What are some of those characteristics?
Speaker 7: You know, sharks have an amazing immune system. It's very
Speaker 7: different from all over vertebrates. They have all these unique
Speaker 7: characters in their immune system, and I think that's one
Speaker 7: of their keys their success, I mean, their ability to heal,
Speaker 7: their ability to deal with pathogens in the ocean is
Speaker 7: just simply amazing.
Speaker 6: How does that work? Do they just have better T cells?
Speaker 6: Do they what's happening in there?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, they're innate immune system and other aspects
Speaker 7: of their immune system are very different. You know, there's
Speaker 7: still a lot of work being done right now. And
Speaker 7: you know just the way they heal. So when chirchs mate,
Speaker 7: males have to bite females to get them in a position.
Speaker 6: Wow, to copulate, right, didn't know that the fuck dude?
Speaker 7: Okay, So now we're talking about teeth, right, a lot
Speaker 7: of biting and females, yes, And females aren't always willing
Speaker 7: to you know, comply, and that's probably part of the
Speaker 7: sexual selection. So females get a choice. If the male
Speaker 7: can't hang on, then you're not going to get to
Speaker 7: may with me. So, but there's a lot of teeth involved,
Speaker 7: and therefore there's gonna be a lot of caring and
Speaker 7: tissue damage and things like that.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 7: Okay, So female's skin is twice as thick as males.
Speaker 6: Is it? Seriously?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah? So and of course you need that, right
Speaker 7: if you're going to mate, and a lot of females
Speaker 7: will mate with more than one male because we now
Speaker 7: know from litters that there's sperm from more than one male,
Speaker 7: So there's this polyandry going on, right, So there's multiple paternities.
Speaker 6: Hey.
Speaker 7: But the other part is how fast they heal from
Speaker 7: those things. So females get completely torn up, and then
Speaker 7: the question is how do they heal so quickly? So
Speaker 7: there's been some really cool research being done by some
Speaker 7: colleagues in.
Speaker 6: Florida, So I don't These sharks can recover from incisions
Speaker 6: super quick because of the anti viral and anti microbial
Speaker 6: properties of their skin's slimy protective film. It is a
Speaker 6: substance that rhymes with fucus, and it's bleeped for decency.
Speaker 6: Every time you hear it. Feel free to do a
Speaker 6: tiny imperceptible butt dance or take a swig of your petverage.
Speaker 7: So what happens is literally within minutes of that injury,
Speaker 7: that begins to pour into the wound and it acts
Speaker 7: like a band aid, an abiotic band aid, and then
Speaker 7: the wound begins to heal outward. So I mean you
Speaker 7: can literally cut a shark into its body cavity. Seawater
Speaker 7: will get into its body cavity. It's not a sterile buzzy.
Speaker 7: But they but they have pores that lead into their
Speaker 7: body cavity, so their body cavity is not sterile.
Speaker 6: So wait, that's like having So they're just getting seawater
Speaker 6: coming in and out and their body cavity is like,
Speaker 6: it's all good, don't worry about it.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Also that makes me think of a sharkskin suit, and
Speaker 6: if you actually had a sharkskin suit, it was just
Speaker 6: covered in a layer that would be not good for
Speaker 6: formal wear.
Speaker 7: But man, you heal fast.
Speaker 6: You can tear it on a fence and be like
Speaker 6: it's cool. Give a couple of minutes. Doctor Chris Lowe
Speaker 6: right now single handedly making sharks lovable and math cool.
Speaker 6: He is a thought magician.
Speaker 7: I just get so excited even about math. Whoa, because
Speaker 7: there's math in sharks. Ooh like what they're covered in math?
Speaker 7: They're teeth. You know, they're a math problem, right because
Speaker 7: they never they have a never ending rows of teeth
Speaker 7: and the teeth keep falling out. And of course how
Speaker 7: old the sharks live, well we don't know, but now
Speaker 7: we're coming up with new techniques to figure out how
Speaker 7: long sharks live, like sleeper sharks, like greenland sharks that
Speaker 7: have been aged to four hundred and seventy years old.
Speaker 6: How do they find out that that's how old they are?
Speaker 7: Really cool? From the dead ones. You can take their
Speaker 7: eyelands and then you can run a laser through that
Speaker 7: and you can measure when radioactive carbon was in the
Speaker 7: atmosphere from when we did bomb test back in the fifties.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 7: So it becomes a little chronometer, a little old time keeper,
Speaker 7: and then you can count these bands the amount of
Speaker 7: carbon radioactive carbon to non radioactive carbon and use that
Speaker 7: as a chronometer to go back. Oh my god, so
Speaker 7: four hundred and seven years old. That's the oldest vertebrate
Speaker 7: on the planet.
Speaker 6: That's really that's super bananas right now? Are they doing
Speaker 6: this on deceased sharks or can they do it?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so they do find if they find a deed
Speaker 6: one that they're like, okay, let's check it out.
Speaker 7: Well. And the other thing is some of these sharks
Speaker 7: are caught in fisheries, right, So they're being caught, they're
Speaker 7: being used, they're already dead you may as well take
Speaker 7: their eyes out and look at their lenses. And when
Speaker 7: when researchers started to do that, they were like, whoa,
Speaker 7: you know, how can this animal live to be that old? Well?
Speaker 7: Sleeper sharks they're some found in the Atlantic, some found
Speaker 7: in the Pacific, some found off Amertica. Live in very
Speaker 7: cold deep water, okay, And what we know about things
Speaker 7: that live in cold deep water is really cold, really dark,
Speaker 7: really old. Because everything slows down, the tabolism slows down.
Speaker 7: Everything slows down. And when you do that, you have
Speaker 7: the ability to live a very long time because you're
Speaker 7: just like slow slow motion.
Speaker 6: They take forever to return emails.
Speaker 7: Exactly exactly so, and there's even some evidence that they
Speaker 7: made even reach maturity until they're one hundred and twenty
Speaker 7: years old.
Speaker 6: Can you imagine having a teenage son for one hundred
Speaker 6: and twenty years of your life, like picking up someone's
Speaker 6: socks and dirty dishes for over a century, Or from
Speaker 6: the shark's perspective, can you imagine having xits until you're
Speaker 6: one hundred and twenty and mystery boners that you can't
Speaker 6: do anything about because you've a curfew, not getting a
Speaker 6: driver's license until you're older than any human on the planet.
Speaker 6: Just no wonder sharks are pissed. Maybe some of them
Speaker 6: are just cranky and horny and they're too young to
Speaker 6: get a job, but also old as shit.
Speaker 7: But again, four hundred million years of evolution, right, so
Speaker 7: they've got something wired and they've passed that on through
Speaker 7: those lineages. So I think those are the things that
Speaker 7: the more I learn about them, the more I just go, Wow,
Speaker 7: these are amazing animals. I understand why people are so
Speaker 7: interested in them. And then you know, what new thing
Speaker 7: can we figure out about them? And more importantly, how
Speaker 7: can they help us?
Speaker 6: Yeah? How can sharks help us?
Speaker 7: Well, you know that's the thing. You know, the more
Speaker 7: we learn about their immune system and their physiology, the
Speaker 7: more we learn that they've got some cool tricks that
Speaker 7: other animals don't.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like a million revolving knife teeth. They're punk is
Speaker 6: a mother.
Speaker 7: And as we begin to understand those tricks, there's ways
Speaker 7: that we can use those tricks ourselves for developing new
Speaker 7: treatments for infections and cancers and all sorts of things. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now, a few Patron's assets and I had this question
Speaker 6: as well, sharks cancer, does it happen.
Speaker 7: It does of cours do get cancer. So there's this
Speaker 7: big thing out there. Sharks don't get cancer at all.
Speaker 7: That's not true. They do get cancers. They do get
Speaker 7: them at lower frequencies than many other types of vertebrates.
Speaker 7: And of course they have this amazing physiology that enables
Speaker 7: them to do that. But there's a lot of research
Speaker 7: being focused in that area right now, and a lot
Speaker 7: of it may come back to slow metabolisms. It may
Speaker 7: come back to, you know, their ability to deal with
Speaker 7: that antio accident. Can't wait to see what the next
Speaker 7: twenty years is going to show.
Speaker 6: And now talk to me about their electric faces. Do
Speaker 6: they have magnets? What's going on?
Speaker 7: Well, it's not that they have magnets. They have the
Speaker 7: ability to detect electric fields. They have little voltmeters in
Speaker 7: their face.
Speaker 6: How does that even happen? Do other animals have that?
Speaker 7: There are some other critters that have it. Duckbilled platypus
Speaker 7: have these things.
Speaker 6: God's up there in a bathrobe like good.
Speaker 7: So the bottom line is the ability to detect electric
Speaker 7: fields and water is easier, right because the fields conduct
Speaker 7: better in that media than they do in air. So
Speaker 7: and in seawater, they conduct even better. So the idea
Speaker 7: there is you can have a fish and that fish
Speaker 7: is full of ions positive ion negative ions, and they
Speaker 7: create basically a biological battery. Every time the fish breeze
Speaker 7: wall wall, the field expands, and of course sharks as
Speaker 7: they swim through the water can detect that electric field
Speaker 7: when they're close. So they have to be maybe a
Speaker 7: meter or two away to be able to detect that.
Speaker 7: So remember those eyelids you're talking about. Yeah, so right
Speaker 7: before a shark goes in to bite something, it closes
Speaker 7: its eyes, it rolls back its nic detaining membrane to
Speaker 7: protect its eye. So how does it find a prey
Speaker 7: that's trying to escape it with its eyes closed, Well,
Speaker 7: it's using these electroceptors to track its prey.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 7: So it's you know, it's kind of like being in
Speaker 7: a cave. And you know, animals in a cave have
Speaker 7: either poor vision or no eyes at all, and yet
Speaker 7: they're able to survive and enhance their senses. In this case,
Speaker 7: they have an extra sense and that's that electro sense.
Speaker 6: Sharks feeding with their eyes closed come on, so cute.
Speaker 6: It's like rummaging in a cupboard with the lights off, like, shoot,
Speaker 6: I know I shouldn't snack, but the bag of marshmallows
Speaker 6: is emitting electricity that helps you find it. And so
Speaker 6: in let's say, I've heard of surfers wearing like shark
Speaker 6: bands that have electro magnetic fields coming off of them.
Speaker 6: Is that a hocus focus right now?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 7: No, some of it, it does work. But the bottom
Speaker 7: line is we've found and there's been some research done
Speaker 7: that shows that sharks can habituate to it. So imagine
Speaker 7: it's like being in a building and then you go
Speaker 7: to a concert. You walk through these soundproof doors and
Speaker 7: suddenly you're just nailed with a sound. So you're going
Speaker 7: to kind of be a little you know, irritated by it,
Speaker 7: maybe disoriented by it, and things like that. So that's
Speaker 7: how we think those fields are working in those cases now,
Speaker 7: But if you have a shark that's highly motivated, it
Speaker 7: will tolerate that. Now, well, it keep you safe some
Speaker 7: of the time, sure, but here's the danger in shark repellants.
Speaker 7: Quite often, when people feel like they have a superman's cloak,
Speaker 7: something that keeps makes them invincible, they do riskier things
Speaker 7: than they would do than if they had nothing at
Speaker 7: all oof. So this is where I have a kind
Speaker 7: of a problem with shark components. I think in most cases,
Speaker 7: if people just use good common sense, they'll be just
Speaker 7: as fine. Then if they use one of these devices.
Speaker 6: Is there a good common sense tactic if you were
Speaker 6: to say, if you had a friend who's like, I've
Speaker 6: started boogie boarding and surfing in cold waters where there
Speaker 6: may be sharks, is there something that you can do
Speaker 6: that's smarter?
Speaker 7: Well, I think, first of all, knowing that they're sharks
Speaker 7: in the water, right, so your brain is taking in information.
Speaker 7: You may look at the beach, you may look at
Speaker 7: the situation and go, you know what, just feels a
Speaker 7: little too creepy. I'm not going to go in today. Hey,
Speaker 7: you know what, you just made a decision.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 7: However, you may do that every single day. You know
Speaker 7: there are sharks there, and you go, I know they're here,
Speaker 7: I'm in the water. I'm trying not to do anything
Speaker 7: that would, you know, piss them off. And as long
Speaker 7: as I do that, I'm going to it's worth the risk.
Speaker 7: And I think that's how most of those people feel.
Speaker 6: Oh, they use an intuition.
Speaker 7: I think. So. I've had some come out. I know
Speaker 7: I've been in the water a couple of times in
Speaker 7: the evening, in particular by myself, and those little hairs
Speaker 7: in the back of my neck start going up, and
Speaker 7: I'm going, okay, this could be a Jaws flashback, right.
Speaker 7: I can hear the music in my head or my
Speaker 7: hind brain is telling me something, and then I think,
Speaker 7: I think I'm gonna get out of the water. Really,
Speaker 7: but that's a decision I make right now. Coming back
Speaker 7: to that concept of what should you do maybe to
Speaker 7: be safer, what we know, based on statistics is that
Speaker 7: your chances of being bitten at a crowded beach are
Speaker 7: very low.
Speaker 6: Oh why is that?
Speaker 7: Well, we think that sharks don't like people.
Speaker 6: They're just like they're just like misanthropes. They'd rather be like,
Speaker 6: you know what, I'm more of an indoor kid.
Speaker 7: Well, you know there's all that suntan lotion pouring off people,
Speaker 7: and you know we're smelly and loud. I mean, if
Speaker 7: you're a shark and you're a cruising by, you might go,
Speaker 7: I'm going to swing wide of this group.
Speaker 6: Right in the parties. They hate parties. They're like, I'm
Speaker 6: not into it exactly.
Speaker 7: So but the bottom line statistics tell us the crowded beaches,
Speaker 7: it's really rare. Okay, So if you're worried about it,
Speaker 7: serve with a friend, Swarm with the buddy, swim with ten.
Speaker 7: The more the merrier, Right. Most sharks, especially the predatory
Speaker 7: type that tend to target large prey, tend to isolate things, right.
Speaker 7: They're looking for something off by itself because it might
Speaker 7: be more vulnerable, might be easier to capture, whereas if
Speaker 7: they're in a group it becomes a little harder.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 7: So these are some things that people can do, and
Speaker 7: you know it should help keep them a little safer.
Speaker 6: I mean I had to ask this, and so did
Speaker 6: patron Ashley Perez. Now, should you ever become snacked on
Speaker 6: by a shark, should you try to administer like a
Speaker 6: well timed boop to the nose?
Speaker 7: Absolutely? So, you know, the bottom line is, I don't
Speaker 7: think you have to tell most people.
Speaker 6: To do that when when it's can it be reflexed?
Speaker 7: Yes, when something grabs you, your response is to hammer
Speaker 7: on it, and that's that's the best thing to do.
Speaker 7: And of course, if you're going to beat on that
Speaker 7: shark that's biting down on you, the best place to
Speaker 7: hit it, or in its around its senses right so
Speaker 7: around the eyes, the nose. Those are all very sensitive areas.
Speaker 7: And what has been kind of shown over and over
Speaker 7: again from people that have encountered these sorts of situations
Speaker 7: is that the sharks tend to release, So you know
Speaker 7: that that's generally the rule of thumb. If shark, you know,
Speaker 7: comes at you, gets really close, bumps you or bite you.
Speaker 6: Have you ever had an encounter in the wild that
Speaker 6: was like either in a shark cage or watching something like,
Speaker 6: what's been the most What's been the craziest memory you've had?
Speaker 7: I would say when my wife, who's also a biologist,
Speaker 7: and I discovered that shark's suntan. What yes, what, yeah?
Speaker 7: That was that was an accident. How do you know
Speaker 7: that they do?
Speaker 6: Are they just out there with like a Marie Claire
Speaker 6: magazine and like some Johoba oil.
Speaker 7: Well, actually, I was studying hammerheads, hammer red sharks, and
Speaker 7: I was studying how they swim, so I would go
Speaker 7: catch them. These are baby hamorrhrets, and I would put
Speaker 7: them in the shallow coral pond. Water's very clear and
Speaker 7: the sand's very white. You know, it's coral sand, and
Speaker 7: I would collect a bunch of hammerheads and I'd put
Speaker 7: them in this pond and then I would film them
Speaker 7: swimming so I could measure how fast their tails beat
Speaker 7: and things like that. And then I told my wife,
Speaker 7: I said, look, I need to go get more sharks
Speaker 7: so I can increase my sample size. She said, let's
Speaker 7: go fishing. So we go out, we catch new sharks.
Speaker 7: We bring them, we put them in the pond, and
Speaker 7: we're standing there together looking at the sharks, going, oh
Speaker 7: my god, they're like different animals. So kind of jokingly
Speaker 7: we're like, maybe they're sun tanning. So it just so
Speaker 7: happens that that summer, the group probably the world's experts
Speaker 7: on the effects of UV in the marine environment, we're
Speaker 7: at this marine lab we were working at. So we
Speaker 7: started bringing them out to this pond and saying, hey,
Speaker 7: you know, we think these sharks are sun tanning, and
Speaker 7: they're like, what are you talking about? Oh my god.
Speaker 7: The only animals known to suntan are humans and a
Speaker 7: couple weird like naked guinea pigs.
Speaker 6: So, alongside fellow marine biologist doctor Gwen Goodmanlow, who was
Speaker 6: also his wife ps Adorable, he designed an experiment where
Speaker 6: they have fixed little pieces of plastic onto the pectoral
Speaker 6: fins of hammerheads. Some of them blocked jaesuve, some pieces
Speaker 6: of plastic blocked all the light, and then some that
Speaker 6: were clear, And then they kept the sharkis there for
Speaker 6: one to three months, kind of like summer camp.
Speaker 7: After that time, we take the sharks out, removed the
Speaker 7: filters and they had tan lines.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, that's so tacky and amazing. That must
Speaker 6: have boggled your mind.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, so we actually get the cover of Nature
Speaker 7: wear that paper.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, I'm looking above me, so directly over
Speaker 6: my head on the wall was a framed magazine cover
Speaker 6: showing two sharks next to each other, one looking like
Speaker 6: my legs in winter and the other looking like wet asphalt.
Speaker 6: The headline red suntanned hammer Heads. That sounds like a
Speaker 6: band that's going to headline Coachella one year.
Speaker 7: It should be. That's a great name.
Speaker 6: Now you actually you got your PhD in zoology in
Speaker 6: Hawaii working with hammerhead sharks. Did you pick them because
Speaker 6: they are the weirdest things on the planet?
Speaker 7: Well, sort of, but also they're kind of like a
Speaker 7: high performance athlete. Okay, I mean they really are as
Speaker 7: sharks go, They're they're highly tuned. They can turn on
Speaker 7: a dime, you know, if they've got this big canard
Speaker 7: wing in the front that generates lyft.
Speaker 6: So, just in case you ever black out and come
Speaker 6: to on the glossy stage of a game show and
Speaker 6: need to know what the broad head flap on a
Speaker 6: hammerhead shark is, I got you covered. It's a sphere
Speaker 6: nid cephalofoil from the Greek for hammer and headwing. And
Speaker 6: not to too many facts into your head, but it
Speaker 6: may act like a canard wing canard wing canard which
Speaker 6: is a little four wing on a fighter jet that
Speaker 6: comes in front of the main wings to help it
Speaker 6: float and get lyft. So now you know that information
Speaker 6: incredibly powerful.
Speaker 7: But they're shark like some of the groups that can
Speaker 7: never stop swimming. If they stop swimming, they suffocate.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 7: So from the time they're born to the time they die,
Speaker 7: they're constantly swimming in order to breathe. So I was
Speaker 7: really interested in, well what does that cost? What does
Speaker 7: that cost to shark?
Speaker 6: God? That sounds like workaholism. Uh yeah, never stop, never stop,
Speaker 6: never stop.
Speaker 7: So I figured, okay, how am I going to measure this.
Speaker 7: So I thought, well, what I'll do is I'll build
Speaker 7: a big water treadmill for these sharks, and then I'll
Speaker 7: put them in this water treadmill, and then I'll make
Speaker 7: them swim at different speeds, and I'll measure how much
Speaker 7: oxygen they take out the water. So if we know
Speaker 7: how much oxygen and animal consumes, you know how many
Speaker 7: calories are burning. Now they need to make a fit
Speaker 7: pit for them. So I built my own acoustic transmitter
Speaker 7: that measured every single tail beat, so every time their
Speaker 7: tails waged back and forth, it would produce a ping
Speaker 7: underwater ping. And then I follow the sharks around for
Speaker 7: forty eight hours and count how many times their tails
Speaker 7: were beating per minute. By doing that, I could calculate
Speaker 7: how many calories they burn per day.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 7: And so basically what I found out was these baby
Speaker 7: hammerheads were burning so many calories that they only had
Speaker 7: about a three week period to learn how to feed
Speaker 7: proficiently on their own, where they would starve to death.
Speaker 6: Now, what is that about some sharks where they have
Speaker 6: to stay moving all the time. Is that so that
Speaker 6: water continues to pass their gills like that? Seems like
Speaker 6: it would be an evolutionary disadvantage, like to the max
Speaker 6: why is that still in place?
Speaker 7: So I think a lot of that has to do
Speaker 7: with Historically many places in the ocean, there's a lot
Speaker 7: of oxygen the ocean, and it's only recently that we're
Speaker 7: starting to see that change.
Speaker 6: So to keep water passing over their sharks have to
Speaker 6: swim around with their mouths open, although some species just
Speaker 6: chill out and gulp in water. Now, in more oxygen
Speaker 6: rich regions of the ocean, sharks can take more pit stops,
Speaker 6: they can kind of buoye around a little less.
Speaker 7: Their metabolic rates are much lower than that of us
Speaker 7: animals that constantly pay a price to keep our body warm,
Speaker 7: so their costs are lower, and that means that even
Speaker 7: though they're constantly moving, their costs are still substantially lower
Speaker 7: than ours.
Speaker 6: Does that mean that they're not sleeping or that they're
Speaker 6: moving while sleeping.
Speaker 7: Well, that's the big question. So there's good evidence that
Speaker 7: some of these sharks actually do kind of go quiescent
Speaker 7: even though they're moving. So, you know, you think of
Speaker 7: those people that are restless sleepers, even while they're sleeping,
Speaker 7: they're rolling all over. At one of those people you know,
Speaker 7: so I could probably get more exercise sleeping than I
Speaker 7: do during the day sometimes. So it's not animals aren't moving.
Speaker 7: They are moving, it's just that they have to do
Speaker 7: that to breathe. But what we think is their brains
Speaker 7: are kind of slowing down and everything is slowing down.
Speaker 7: And we recently did a really cool experiment with these
Speaker 7: baby white shirts that were studying, and we built a
Speaker 7: custom fitbit for them that clamps in their dorsal fin
Speaker 7: and that fitbit measures every tail beat they make and
Speaker 7: also measures every motion they make. What we found was
Speaker 7: really cool. So two of the sharks that we tracked,
Speaker 7: we're doing these thirty foot circles, and they were swimming
Speaker 7: in a bank. So they'd bank swim a thirty foot
Speaker 7: circle and that circle was almost a perfect circle. Oh crazy,
Speaker 7: And they would do that for twenty minutes, and then
Speaker 7: all of a sudden they would stop and reverse and go
Speaker 7: back the other way. And they'd do that for twenty minutes,
Speaker 7: and they'd stop, reverse and go back the other way,
Speaker 7: and they would do that for four hours.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 7: So we're scratching our heads, going what in the hell
Speaker 7: is that? So my students started looking through the literature,
Speaker 7: and it turns out that migratory birds that fly will
Speaker 7: actually turn off half their brain. And when they do that,
Speaker 7: they'll fly in a circle in one direction, and then
Speaker 7: they'll turn off the other half of their brain and
Speaker 7: flying circle in the opposite direction.
Speaker 6: Oh my word.
Speaker 7: Y'all just believe that that's the way that these migratory birds,
Speaker 7: which are warm bodied, right, so they're spending a lot
Speaker 7: of energy keeping their bodies warm, are basically resting their
Speaker 7: brain and they kind of go on autopilot like that.
Speaker 6: Are sharks doing the same thing, then it could be?
Speaker 7: Could be.
Speaker 6: And now when you say white sharks, is that a
Speaker 6: new term for great white sharks or white sharks little
Speaker 6: great white sharks?
Speaker 7: Really good question. We've gotten rid of the great part.
Speaker 7: So common common name now is white shark aka the.
Speaker 6: Great white because great white has such a cachet for
Speaker 6: like watch out, it's a killer, right.
Speaker 7: You know, it's given them such a big head.
Speaker 6: So there's such dicks.
Speaker 7: Now we're trying to bring them back to reality. There's
Speaker 7: such a pre madonna. They're just gonna be white.
Speaker 6: Sharks now, such complicated coffee orders, and so we just
Speaker 6: call them white sharks. Now, yeah, okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 6: I wasn't sure if they were just like little ones.
Speaker 6: And then is there what is the biggest flim flam
Speaker 6: that you would like to debunk about sharks If you
Speaker 6: could bust a myth, what would it be?
Speaker 7: Well, so there's actually a lot.
Speaker 6: Okay, probably the.
Speaker 7: Biggest one is if you're in the water you see
Speaker 7: a shark, it's going to attack you. That just simply
Speaker 7: is bullshit. That's just not true. I mean, we have
Speaker 7: that millions of people in the water in southern California
Speaker 7: year round in and amount sharks every single day and
Speaker 7: nothing happens. Now, they may not see the shark, but
Speaker 7: those sharks are there. So this myth that if you're
Speaker 7: in the water, the sharks are going to bite you.
Speaker 7: The other one is if you're in the water and
Speaker 7: you're bleeding. Great example, and I get this every spring
Speaker 7: if a woman is mentuating is it safe for her
Speaker 7: to swim in the ocean?
Speaker 6: Yes. I got this question from patron and Mars expert
Speaker 6: Jennifer Booz, who was a guest on a previous episode.
Speaker 6: She said, ken of sharks smell my period in the
Speaker 6: water or.
Speaker 7: What probably if it's very close. But the reality of
Speaker 7: it is there are little kids out there on the
Speaker 7: beach that are all skinned up. Right, We're bleeding. So
Speaker 7: every little kid that goes to the beach that skins
Speaker 7: his knee or her knee on something is bleeding in
Speaker 7: the water. It's not like sharks are picking them off
Speaker 7: every day. It's just not true. So people have this
Speaker 7: vision that a drop of blood sends sharks into this craze.
Speaker 7: It's just not true, okay. And the other examples I
Speaker 7: use is, man, I can't tell you how many hours
Speaker 7: I've spent putting hundreds of pounds of ground up fish
Speaker 7: and blood in the water to try to attract sharks
Speaker 7: and get absolutely nothing right.
Speaker 6: You're like, you must be the real chum master out there, Like,
Speaker 6: how much of your work involves hauling buckets of chum.
Speaker 7: Well, I used to do it a lot. I try
Speaker 7: to do it less now. Okay, So mainly because we're
Speaker 7: putting a lot of nutrients in the ocean that we
Speaker 7: don't need to use. They're better ways to attract sharks.
Speaker 7: So but the bottom line is, here's the situation where
Speaker 7: we're trying to attract them using the same things and
Speaker 7: we can't. So this whole fallacy, Oh my god, you know,
Speaker 7: if I'm bleeding in the water, you know, sharks are
Speaker 7: going to, you know, form a frenzy. It's just not true.
Speaker 6: Now, where were you? Do you remember the moment you
Speaker 6: heard about sharknado? Do you remember the actual moment and
Speaker 6: what your reaction was.
Speaker 7: Actually, I got after the first one came out. I
Speaker 7: never saw any of them. After the first one came out,
Speaker 7: I got a call from a reporter who actually asked me,
Speaker 7: could that really happen?
Speaker 6: I mean the answer is yes, I'm sure all the time,
Speaker 6: very frequent.
Speaker 7: I mean I was shocked, and I was trying to
Speaker 7: termin where they're serious. I think they were. I really
Speaker 7: I think they were. And I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 7: there are cases during hurricanes and things like that that
Speaker 7: shark's doing inland they actually get carried in by storm
Speaker 7: surge and things like that. But I don't I don't
Speaker 7: think I've ever heard of a swirling tornado of sharks
Speaker 7: swirling around off the ocean from a waterspout. That just
Speaker 7: doesn't happen. So I think those are the sorts of
Speaker 7: crazy things that every once in a while happened, and
Speaker 7: you shake your head, like, what.
Speaker 6: Like, even though the world can seem like a dystopian
Speaker 6: simulation right now, like politically, like Shark NATO's not going
Speaker 6: to happen.
Speaker 7: No, okay, it's not going to happen, as crazy as
Speaker 7: it may be. But the bottom line is, actually I
Speaker 7: think some of those movies are are They're fun. I
Speaker 7: get it, they're fun. They're kind of a cool twist,
Speaker 7: and they're so unrealistic that it actually helps. It helps
Speaker 7: get people over the fear of sharks because they think
Speaker 7: that's just utterly ridiculous. So in a way, the campy
Speaker 7: ones like that actually help sharks.
Speaker 6: I think, do you have a favorite shark movie, because
Speaker 6: I'm sure you have several unfavorite shark movies.
Speaker 7: Oh my god. People give me DVDs all the time.
Speaker 7: I have a stack up there. I try. I try
Speaker 7: to give them away.
Speaker 6: You're like, getase.
Speaker 7: Well, actually, Jaws is one of my favorites. Is it
Speaker 7: really really is?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 6: For me?
Speaker 7: I was there. I grew up on Martha's vineyards, so
Speaker 7: I was there when they were filming it. Oh my god,
Speaker 7: half my half my kids I went to school with
Speaker 7: are in the movie half the time.
Speaker 6: God, holy shit, that's crazy.
Speaker 7: So for me, watching Jaws is like family reunion.
Speaker 6: So do you think that influenced at all your work
Speaker 6: with sharks or how do you grapple with the fact that,
Speaker 6: like that that movie is part of your childhood and
Speaker 6: it's part of so many people's fear of sharks. How
Speaker 6: do you merge the two.
Speaker 7: Well, you know that maybe being there and seeing how
Speaker 7: it was made. You know, so watching the sausage being made,
Speaker 7: you know, give her a different impression of what you're eating. Right.
Speaker 7: So the idea there is, you know, we saw all
Speaker 7: the things. You know, a lot of my friends school
Speaker 7: friends were in the movie. There were either extras or
Speaker 7: things like that, and you know, they saw the mechanical shark,
Speaker 7: and you know, sometimes it didn't work, and you know,
Speaker 7: so when you see all those things, then you realize
Speaker 7: it's just a movie, right, So I think being there
Speaker 7: when that was happening made it easier. But of course
Speaker 7: when you watch the movie, this is the brilliance of
Speaker 7: Steven Spielberg, right, you know, none of the things he
Speaker 7: wanted to actually shoot, like that real underwater footage they
Speaker 7: had a hard time getting. And then the mechanical shark
Speaker 7: really works. So he made that movie where you actually
Speaker 7: only see the shark and only minutes of the movie.
Speaker 6: Oh really, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 7: Watch it again. See how many times you actually see
Speaker 7: a shark, whether it be a mechanical one or a
Speaker 7: real one. So it's your brain that's doing that. Your
Speaker 7: brain is building the monster. And that was the brilliant
Speaker 7: part that in the soundtrack track is just amazing, right,
Speaker 7: I mean, John Williams is amazing. So it creates that
Speaker 7: whole scene in your head.
Speaker 6: This feels kind of like a shark based stop hitting
Speaker 6: yourself kind of a situation, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: Like the movie's doing it, but also we're doing it
Speaker 6: to ourselves. But it's more we're doing okay. And now
Speaker 6: have you ever said, be honest with me in the field,
Speaker 6: we're going to need a bigger boat. Uh?
Speaker 7: Yes, has that happened, Yes, it has. It's happened a
Speaker 7: couple of times, not because of the size of the sharks,
Speaker 7: but usually because the ocean that we're in. So last summer,
Speaker 7: my students were out tracking those baby hammerheads or baby
Speaker 7: white sharks that I was telling you about. We're doing
Speaker 7: this out of a small seventeen foot Boston Whaler. Well,
Speaker 7: the third shark we did. At one o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 7: my students call me up and they go, we to
Speaker 7: need a pigo poach. So I go, okay, I told
Speaker 7: my other students take out a bigger boat and we'll
Speaker 7: switch boats. So they switch out boats, and then I
Speaker 7: get another phone call at one o'clock in the morning
Speaker 7: and they're like, we're now off Newport Beach that's like
Speaker 7: twenty two miles away, and they go.
Speaker 8: We to need a pigo poach.
Speaker 6: They're going.
Speaker 7: Man, when they know when they're ready to leave a spot,
Speaker 7: it seems like they know exactly where to go, and
Speaker 7: they make a bee line.
Speaker 6: They're just like, way out yep.
Speaker 7: So on, you know, I'm done with Long Beach. I'm
Speaker 7: going to Dana Point and I'm going to hang out
Speaker 7: there for a month.
Speaker 6: Reminds me of people I used to know, like in
Speaker 6: club days that would like go to a club ten thirty,
Speaker 6: dait arrive eleven fifteen, or at the next club, you're like,
Speaker 6: where are we going next?
Speaker 7: Exactly? This place is dead.
Speaker 6: Have you been in an underwater shark cage? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 6: you've been in those right. My thought on them is
Speaker 6: like they look scary, but also I'm like they look
Speaker 6: like they're not going to They seem like they would
Speaker 6: be safer than other things because they're not going to
Speaker 6: buy through.
Speaker 7: The bars, right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 6: Fun is it crazy?
Speaker 7: It's kind of cool? I mean, you do. You do
Speaker 7: feel somewhat restricted, right, you know, because you can't move
Speaker 7: as well, and as a diver, I'm used to being
Speaker 7: in the open water. I feel more comfortable, you know,
Speaker 7: being able to move a little bit more freely. The
Speaker 7: other thing that is always a little uncomfortable is when
Speaker 7: the cage is hanging in the water and you're hanging
Speaker 7: by a rope, right or a cable or something like that.
Speaker 7: You go, Okay, wait a minute, I'm in a box
Speaker 7: over two hundred feet of water. You know. It sounds
Speaker 7: like a plot to a movie, right yeah, And you're going,
Speaker 7: how quickly can I get out of here? If I
Speaker 7: have to? But the biggest problem that has occurred with
Speaker 7: some of the cages is that the photographers want big windows.
Speaker 7: They have big cameras, and they want to get those
Speaker 7: big cameras out those windows. You don't get a beautiful
Speaker 7: shot of this awesome sharks when you buy with bars
Speaker 7: in it. Yeah, so they make the windows bigger. But
Speaker 7: what happens is the smaller sharks can swim through the
Speaker 7: windows and occasionally when they get in the cage with you,
Speaker 7: they don't like that. Yeah, and they start bouncing off
Speaker 7: the walls. And you're in the cage with a shark,
Speaker 7: and the sharks not happy out being in the cage,
Speaker 7: and you're trying to get out of the cage. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Those aren't Those aren't good scenarios.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that sounds like having a bee in your car.
Speaker 7: It's kind of like that. So for me, I prefer
Speaker 7: not to use cages. And in good clear water, when
Speaker 7: you can see the sharks coming and the sharks know
Speaker 7: you can see them coming, you feel a lot more comfortable.
Speaker 6: Have you ever gotten a little love nibble from a shark?
Speaker 7: The little ones because they don't like being held, right,
Speaker 7: A lot of animals that don't like being held. So
Speaker 7: those are the ones that are there's some forgiveness there, right,
Speaker 7: this little teeth, little wounds. I've been bumped a couple
Speaker 7: of times, I've been come close to getting bit. But
Speaker 7: there's one rule in my lab, one rule, really important rule.
Speaker 7: Do not get bitten as the number one rule. I
Speaker 7: always tell my students if there's one thing you leave
Speaker 7: the lab with rule number one. I'm not taking to
Speaker 7: anybody the emergency room.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, how do you And so they know
Speaker 6: their precautions.
Speaker 7: Yes, we spend a lot of time training, we really do.
Speaker 7: We spend a lot of time on how to properly
Speaker 7: hold sharks. And it's not just for our safety, it's
Speaker 7: for theirs, because we want to make sure these animals
Speaker 7: are well taken care of. But the other part is
Speaker 7: when you're in the water, what do you do when
Speaker 7: you see these sharks? And can we begin to interpret
Speaker 7: their behavior and generally what you find. And most water
Speaker 7: people know this already.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: It's like having dogs. So people that have dogs are
Speaker 7: around dogs all the time. You can tell when a
Speaker 7: dog's upset, you can tell when a dog's afraid, you
Speaker 7: can tell when a dog's angry, and you know what
Speaker 7: to do in those in response to those recognitions. Sharks
Speaker 7: are no different. They really aren't. So once you start
Speaker 7: to interpret body language, you can start to go, Okay,
Speaker 7: that shark is not in a good state. I'm just
Speaker 7: going to back up.
Speaker 6: Also, I asked later it happened to be off Mike
Speaker 6: if sharks have individual personalities, and Chris stopped and looked
Speaker 6: at me like I had asked the same question about
Speaker 6: his children, and rightfully so he was like, oh, you
Speaker 6: dear woman, Yes, of course they do. So my job
Speaker 6: in life is now to wear spiked shoes and to
Speaker 6: climb the near tallest tree, and screamed to as many
Speaker 6: people in your shot that each shark has a unique personality.
Speaker 6: They're like dogs or people in the real world. Maybe
Speaker 6: some of them are really sweet and would help you move,
Speaker 6: and then others would like not even RSVP for your
Speaker 6: birthday party.
Speaker 7: Or you know it's coming really closed, it's just checking
Speaker 7: me out. If I give it a good swat in
Speaker 7: the nose, you know that'll that'll be good enough. So
Speaker 7: these are the sorts of things that we're learning. We're
Speaker 7: trying to interpret their body language so that we can
Speaker 7: better give that information of the public, so that if
Speaker 7: you see a shark, you can do the same thing
Speaker 7: like you would if you're walking down the street and
Speaker 7: you encounter a dog.
Speaker 6: So it's back up, maybe maybe nose boop. Maybe trust
Speaker 6: your intuition and don't be a bucket of chum pretty much.
Speaker 7: Okay, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So and then you know, being aware of your situations.
Speaker 7: So you know, I hear really funny stories some surfers
Speaker 7: who they're like, I love going out in the stir
Speaker 7: and communing with nature. It's great.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: There are times them out there and there's this huge
Speaker 7: school of fish around me and they're underneath my board.
Speaker 7: I'm in the middle of it, and I'm thinking that's great.
Speaker 7: I'm like, yeah, that's probably not the best place to be,
Speaker 7: you know, because you're in the middle of a bait
Speaker 7: ball and what a sharks do? They charge you those
Speaker 7: bait balls, and you don't want to have your foot
Speaker 7: mistaken as a piece of bait.
Speaker 6: Oh I've never heard of the term bait ball, but
Speaker 6: it's now my favorite.
Speaker 7: Yep yep. So the other one is they're out there
Speaker 7: and it's beautiful evening and a baby seal or sea
Speaker 7: lion climbs on their board and they're thinking, oh, what
Speaker 7: a touching moment. It's wanting to bond with me. Actually,
Speaker 7: it's trying to hide from what's in the water that's
Speaker 7: trying to get it.
Speaker 6: Oh man, I just went so deep down a rabbit
Speaker 6: hole watching clips of seals on surfboards, and they also
Speaker 6: flop into fishing boats to take refuge from orcas like
Speaker 6: scared little aqua dogs. And if you're grumpy, are in
Speaker 6: a bad mood, just consider our species so lucky that
Speaker 6: the thing that kills us the most, especially as a nation,
Speaker 6: is like eating too many appetizer platters at TJIF Fridays.
Speaker 6: Other animals are constantly watching their backs because they might
Speaker 6: get eaten, and we likely have more ability than we're
Speaker 6: aware of to sense that, but we just probably chalk
Speaker 6: those perceptions up to spiedy sense or whatever because we're
Speaker 6: just not used to using them. Now it's time to
Speaker 6: use your questions and get into the rapid fire round.
Speaker 6: But before we get there, we're going to take a
Speaker 6: quick break to toss some money at people doing good work.
Speaker 6: This episode originally came out in twenty eighteen, but now
Speaker 6: that it's out in twenty twenty one, we have sponsors
Speaker 6: and we have donations. So this week's donation goes to
Speaker 6: miss Elasmo and Miss Alasmo. It stands for Minorities in
Speaker 6: Shark Science and it was founded in twenty twenty two
Speaker 6: years again, after this episode was originally recorded, and it's
Speaker 6: a great organization of shark scientists, and they say, right
Speaker 6: now we need donors to support travel for workshop participants,
Speaker 6: our fellowships, and general operating expenses. Also side note, I
Speaker 6: am very much supposed to be taking a break and
Speaker 6: on the honey moon. I just reached out to them
Speaker 6: to see about a bonus episode to turn around quickly,
Speaker 6: because I can't stop myself when it comes to introducing
Speaker 6: you to great people doing really great things. And they
Speaker 6: are them. So there's a link to follow them in
Speaker 6: the show notes at miss Underscore Alasmo. Okay, words from
Speaker 6: sponsors making that donation possible.
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Speaker 6: All right, let's descend into the metal cage of inquiry.
Speaker 6: Here we go. There were so many good ones. I
Speaker 6: jammed in as many as I could. But let's start
Speaker 6: with Toefer, who asked this innocent, kind of breezy casual
Speaker 6: question that I love. Is it true that sharks eat
Speaker 6: each other in the womb?
Speaker 7: Okay? So the answer is yes, okay, yeap. So it's
Speaker 7: called a delfha phaiji and it's common in Santaiger sharks. Okay,
Speaker 7: so they're kind of like they should have been called
Speaker 7: highlander shark because there can only be one one PERI
Speaker 7: really yeah, So they eat all their lower, lower, slower
Speaker 7: growing siblings.
Speaker 6: Okay, man, that's the one way to have the survival
Speaker 6: of the fittest. Start them off young. They're all only
Speaker 6: children like, really, me too, that's so weird. I'm an
Speaker 6: only tod. That's so weird. How we're all only to hum?
Speaker 6: Drew wants to know My nine year old Chelsea would
Speaker 6: like to know if sharks fart.
Speaker 7: Thinks ooh, good question. A lot of other fishes do boats.
Speaker 7: There are other reasons for that. They probably do because
Speaker 7: they probably build up a little methane gas in there.
Speaker 6: So for more on this topic, you may want to
Speaker 6: add to your library the reference book Does It Fart?
Speaker 6: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence, written by a
Speaker 6: zoologist alongside a salamander expert and fun side note, doctor
Speaker 6: David Stein of the Herpetology episode is thanked in the
Speaker 6: forward of this book for helping inspire it once again
Speaker 6: it's called does It Fart?
Speaker 7: But by and large, sharks digestive systems are amazing.
Speaker 6: Are they so efficient?
Speaker 7: They're unbelievably efficient, and considering what they eat. So, first
Speaker 7: of all, sharks are unique in that they can evert
Speaker 7: their stomach. So like when we get sick, we have
Speaker 7: to have what's called reverse peristalsis, So suddenly muscles that
Speaker 7: normally go in one direction from your mouth to your
Speaker 7: stomach go that's not good in our stomach, and they
Speaker 7: start moving the other direction. That's why you vomit. Sharks
Speaker 7: actually don't do that. They actually turn their stomach inside out.
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, so they evert it out their mouth.
Speaker 7: They can rinse it out and then pull it back in.
Speaker 6: God, that's so handy. It really is on their twenty
Speaker 6: first birthday. I mean, they do live to be four
Speaker 6: hundred and whatever. But I don't know what the equivalent
Speaker 6: is of legal drinking age, but that would be handy.
Speaker 7: But when you're eating whole fish with spines and scales
Speaker 7: and things that are really hard to digest, why pass
Speaker 7: those through your sensitive inner bits? Why not just get
Speaker 7: rid of from flesh amount.
Speaker 6: It's just like shaking crumbs and bobby pins out of
Speaker 6: your purse.
Speaker 7: And then once that meal passes and it starts going
Speaker 7: through their intestine. Their intestines this great space saving device
Speaker 7: that's a spiral staircase where food kind of winds its
Speaker 7: way through a kind of looks like a football with
Speaker 7: a spiral staircase, and it's very efficient at pulling out
Speaker 7: all the good nutrients. But some sharks actually have a
Speaker 7: different kind of what's called a scrolling valve. So basically
Speaker 7: they can actually rinse out their intestine, out their anus.
Speaker 7: What yeah, yeah, now this is something you typically want
Speaker 7: to do in private.
Speaker 6: No, really, shake out your rectum in private. You'll see.
Speaker 7: The way we know this works is in aquaria public
Speaker 7: aquaria where they have some of these sharks. They will
Speaker 7: have their sharks out during the day and at night
Speaker 7: and they look great, and the next morning they command
Speaker 7: and the sharks dead on the bottom of the tank.
Speaker 7: So the researchers of the aquerus will take them out
Speaker 7: and they'll do any cropsy, and what they'll find is
Speaker 7: that their intestine, the lower part of their intestine, has
Speaker 7: perforations and they internally hemorrhage and nobody can figure out
Speaker 7: how this was happening. Well, it turns out at Wikiki Aquarium,
Speaker 7: one of the grad students who is in charge of
Speaker 7: sweeping up the foyer at night, saw this happen. Saw
Speaker 7: this black tip brief shark swinging around, flush this thing
Speaker 7: out its butt, and a jack came over and bit it.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, rude, rude.
Speaker 7: So the great thing is they have the ability to
Speaker 7: completely flush their body their digestive track out to get
Speaker 7: rid of all sorts of debris and parasites and all
Speaker 7: sorts of things. The bad thing is you don't want
Speaker 7: to do that in the presence of other predators.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, this is like triple lock on the
Speaker 6: bathroom here exactly. Oh my god, that's so tragic. But
Speaker 6: who knew that. Whoever was sweeping the lobby was like,
Speaker 6: you just figured out a whole new thing about the
Speaker 6: bowels of a shark.
Speaker 7: Exactly.
Speaker 6: Oh that's amazing. Both hal science and justin so want
Speaker 6: to know essentially, how aggressive are sharks really.
Speaker 7: Not? Well, they're not any more aggressive than I would
Speaker 7: say most of the other animals that we're familiar with.
Speaker 7: Like all animals, they will protect themselves. Everybody has a
Speaker 7: personal space, and when something starts getting into a personal space,
Speaker 7: you will have a breaking point where you will protect yourself,
Speaker 7: push somebody else away, thwart somebody, do whatever you have
Speaker 7: to do to protect that personal space. And we know
Speaker 7: sharks have that, and they have a body language that
Speaker 7: they warn other animals that you're in my space. And
Speaker 7: my predecessor Don Nelson did some really cool research on that.
Speaker 6: Do they flick their tails like sassy, No, they.
Speaker 7: Arched their back, they drop their petrol fins. You know,
Speaker 7: like when you chase a cat down an alley and
Speaker 7: you corner them and they arch their back and their
Speaker 7: furs stands up and they bare their teeth. That process
Speaker 7: is known as an agonistic display.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's like mad dogging someone mad dogging.
Speaker 7: It's like back off jack. So we know that sharks
Speaker 7: exhibit that behavior, and that behavior is an agonistic display
Speaker 7: because my predecessor would chase them around underwater sub to
Speaker 7: piss them off, and then he would get them to
Speaker 7: the point where they would break out of it and
Speaker 7: they would attack the sub and take off.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 7: So he could actually induce that behavior and then get
Speaker 7: them to, you know, basically do what a cat would do.
Speaker 7: And then of course when animals feed, that's not aggressive,
Speaker 7: that's just feeding.
Speaker 6: Right, gotta eat, gotta eat, you gotta eat. You're a shark.
Speaker 6: Sara Naishall wants to know. I've seen a few videos
Speaker 6: recently of sharks enjoying scritches. Do sharks have a type
Speaker 6: of pleasure center their brains?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 6: They like all screeches scratches?
Speaker 7: So they do have a lot itchies, I'll give them that.
Speaker 7: So there are a lot of ectoparasites that get on sharks,
Speaker 7: and they have little claws and they move around the
Speaker 7: body and they probably itch. So quite often it's not
Speaker 7: on common sea sharks rub on the seafloor, or they'll
Speaker 7: rub on coral reefs, so they'll rub on rocks trying
Speaker 7: to rub these things off. In fact, one of the
Speaker 7: reasons why we think some sharks jump is to try
Speaker 7: to dislodge those things.
Speaker 6: They're like, literally get off my back exactly. Neil Williams
Speaker 6: wants to know what's with the fish that tags along
Speaker 6: with sharks like an annoying little brother. So the ones that, like,
Speaker 6: I mean, are those lamp breeze what are they?
Speaker 7: So those are remorra. So there's remorra and shark suckers,
Speaker 7: and basically they're hitchhikers, but they're hitchhikers with a purpose.
Speaker 7: So their goal is to not only catch a ride.
Speaker 7: So sharks are like uber basically for them, but also
Speaker 7: uber eats, right, so as the shark's feeding, it's releasing
Speaker 7: little bits and pieces that they can actually snack on.
Speaker 6: This sounds like the fish version of being a stowaway
Speaker 6: on a gelato truck, and I am into it.
Speaker 7: You know, they're kind of getting a ride and a
Speaker 7: meal at the same time. Oh, that's so cute not
Speaker 7: to mention. Now you're with big brother, and big brother
Speaker 7: nothing's going to come try to eat you because you're
Speaker 7: attached to a big shark.
Speaker 6: But they might be like, ugh, get on, yeah, they'll
Speaker 6: do that.
Speaker 7: They'll do that, and all the remorse do switch to
Speaker 7: the other side.
Speaker 6: What a professional pester Aki wants to know? Do sharks
Speaker 6: communicate with each other? And if so, what do they
Speaker 6: talk about?
Speaker 7: Well, probably the same things we do, like, Hey, how's
Speaker 7: your day going. Have you seen any seals lately?
Speaker 6: Do I have a remor on my butt right now?
Speaker 7: Just more of the week? My butt look big, stuff
Speaker 7: like that. Yeah, So you know, that's the part that
Speaker 7: I think is really interesting. That's the part we're trying
Speaker 7: to figure out. A lot of fish use chemicals as
Speaker 7: a means of communication. They use pheromones to communicate with
Speaker 7: individuals of the opposite sex to say, you know, hey, baby,
Speaker 7: I'm are you looking for a mate? Or you know,
Speaker 7: maybe I just saw something really scary and there's there's
Speaker 7: a predator around here, and those chemicals alarm them, so
Speaker 7: they're meant to scare other sharks, so so we don't
Speaker 7: fully understand how that system works. In addition to the
Speaker 7: body language parts, and some of the body language may
Speaker 7: be very subtle, big ones tend to show the little
Speaker 7: ones you're in my space. So they'll do things like
Speaker 7: jaw gaping. They'll flap their gums basically.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, and.
Speaker 7: That is meant you're you're you're pissing me off. You
Speaker 7: better back off, damn.
Speaker 6: So they do to communicate, they do.
Speaker 7: They do our job right now is try to figure
Speaker 7: out what those messages mean. Mm hmm.
Speaker 6: And when you say, if there's a predator around for sharks,
Speaker 6: what would be a predator to sharks, what eat sharks?
Speaker 6: Because aren't they an apex predator?
Speaker 7: Sure, well, sharks eat other sharks. Okay, so that they'll
Speaker 7: they'll eat other sharks, no problem. But probably the king
Speaker 7: of the hill, a king of the ocean is really orca.
Speaker 7: I mean, they're the true badasses of the ocean because
Speaker 7: they're the only thing that's known to take down adult
Speaker 7: white sharks.
Speaker 6: Didn't know that, you know what now that you say,
Speaker 6: it's they're kind of like a an SUV cop car.
Speaker 7: They really are. They are true badasses. And what makes
Speaker 7: them the true badasses is that they're warm bodied, they're
Speaker 7: fast swimmers, super smart, and they're very social. So they
Speaker 7: work as a team.
Speaker 6: Oh so they can surround one white shore.
Speaker 7: They're basically like a gang, the worst gang of wolves
Speaker 7: you can imagine.
Speaker 6: But it's so funny because no one's afraid of orcas
Speaker 6: like they are sharks.
Speaker 7: I wonder who did the pr for those whales?
Speaker 6: Damn s world. Here we go, Okay, a couple more questions,
Speaker 6: then I know you gotta go. Here's Karl wants to know,
Speaker 6: and Alicia Perrott wants to know how do their teeth
Speaker 6: grow so quickly? And what determines how many rows of
Speaker 6: teeth a shark has.
Speaker 7: Okay, so some of that's genetic. So the number of
Speaker 7: teeth they have perroh is genetic. In fact, we can
Speaker 7: use that as a way of identifying certain species. The
Speaker 7: tooth shape actually changes, which is really cool. What so
Speaker 7: if you're the type of person that hates going to
Speaker 7: a dentist, you should have been a shark absolutely. Because
Speaker 7: the cool thing is when they're small, their teeth will
Speaker 7: be a different shape because they're designed for eating different things.
Speaker 7: Usually the things that eat when they're small, but as
Speaker 7: they get bigger, their teeth morphology can change so they
Speaker 7: can eat different things. So the cool thing about that
Speaker 7: is their teeth change as they mature, which enables them
Speaker 7: to feed on different things.
Speaker 6: And they just keep growing.
Speaker 7: I just keep growing. So here you can see behind
Speaker 7: the gum would be another five or six rows of
Speaker 7: teeth that are developed, so the entire front row is
Speaker 7: programmed to it's like literally a conveyor belt. Their front
Speaker 7: row fall out about every thirty days, oh my god,
Speaker 7: and a new row of teeth is constantly rotating in And.
Speaker 6: That's why we can find sometimes people find shark teeth
Speaker 6: on the beach like they're just disposable pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 6: that's amazing. I have never seen a shark skull like
Speaker 6: this up clothes and to look and to see them
Speaker 6: all nested in there, it's crazy. It's like it's almost
Speaker 6: like if you were to take a part of rosebud
Speaker 6: and it's just a layer after layer of teeth. Oh
Speaker 6: my god, Oh my god. Okay, last two questions are,
Speaker 6: what is the worst thing about your job? Is it?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 6: Is it scraping tanks? Is it scheduling press? Like, what's
Speaker 6: the shittiest thing about your job?
Speaker 7: What do you hate as a university professor? The worst
Speaker 7: thing about my job is grading? Oh really? Oh my god,
Speaker 7: do I hate grading? Oh it's the worst.
Speaker 6: I love that. This is a person who has been
Speaker 6: in a suspended in a shark take in the ocean,
Speaker 6: and the worst thing about your life is grady.
Speaker 7: I would clean a tank before before our grade. Oh man,
Speaker 7: I hate gred.
Speaker 6: So grading sucks the most.
Speaker 7: Grading sucks the most.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: I love being in the field. I love being out
Speaker 7: working with my students. I love working with sharks. But
Speaker 7: I have paperwork that I have to do and somebody's
Speaker 7: going to do it and it always falls on me.
Speaker 7: So that's another really crappy job, you know. Even dealing
Speaker 7: with the press, Yes, I don't mind doing that because
Speaker 7: I feel as though the more I do it, the
Speaker 7: more reporters I educate. We gotta we gotta change the dynamic.
Speaker 7: We got to change the way people think about sharks.
Speaker 7: And to get a reporter say that that, that to
Speaker 7: me is a win.
Speaker 6: Right, It's a chance to get people to love sharks
Speaker 6: as much as you do.
Speaker 7: And I think it's working. I think we're slowly making progress.
Speaker 6: Now, what's the best thing about what you do?
Speaker 7: Jeez, there's so much I know. I mean, I love
Speaker 7: working with students. I love talking to the public about sharks.
Speaker 7: People have so many interesting questions and observations. I love
Speaker 7: working with kids. Kids are like, they have no fear, none,
Speaker 7: they are just like that is the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 7: I love technology.
Speaker 6: Because you use a lot of it in your telemetry.
Speaker 7: I'm a total tech junkie. If I had to go
Speaker 7: back to school, I do it for engineering. Really, Oh
Speaker 7: my god, I love it.
Speaker 6: But we need you in the shark world.
Speaker 7: No, no, we need we need engineer, computer scientists, shark biologists.
Speaker 7: That's what we need.
Speaker 6: So calling all people who have interest in all those things,
Speaker 6: go do that.
Speaker 7: Come see me please. So and it's changing the way
Speaker 7: we look at sharks. Technology is literally revolutionizing our understanding
Speaker 7: of the ocean. So what held us back was the
Speaker 7: lack of tools.
Speaker 6: You can do so much more now than you could
Speaker 6: twenty years ago in terms of collecting data, right.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, And it's because the technology has got us to
Speaker 7: that point. And the great thing is it's getting like
Speaker 7: minded engineers and like minded computer scientists to say Okay, hey,
Speaker 7: I can work with you. That's really cool idea. I
Speaker 7: can build that for you. I can work with you
Speaker 7: to build that. And then when that technology comes along,
Speaker 7: we're suddenly buried in data. Biologists who aren't used to
Speaker 7: having that much data are suddenly going, oh my god,
Speaker 7: what do we do with all this? And now we're
Speaker 7: working with data scientists that go, hey, I know how
Speaker 7: to help you with that. And what it's doing is
Speaker 7: it's showing people how we use the technology, how we're
Speaker 7: using it to understand sharks, how they can use that
Speaker 7: to use the beaches safer. And then it's motivating the
Speaker 7: next generation of student who is interested in science or math,
Speaker 7: or technology or sharks.
Speaker 6: Do you think that there is a world five ten
Speaker 6: years down the line where we look at sharks with
Speaker 6: the same warmth and reverence that we do whales and
Speaker 6: cougars and other maybe predators who are really astounding biologically.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of people are getting there. And
Speaker 7: the tough part is, you know, if you look at
Speaker 7: predators in general, land predators, ocean predators, we got rid
Speaker 7: of them all fifty two one hundred years. We eliminated
Speaker 7: those things because we perceived them as a potential threat.
Speaker 7: And what's happened since then is humans have now used
Speaker 7: the woods and the mountains and the ocean for all
Speaker 7: sorts of recreation, and we did so without those predators.
Speaker 7: And about twenty five years ago we recognized the importance
Speaker 7: of those predators and we started putting in place protections
Speaker 7: for them. And now that they're coming back, we don't
Speaker 7: know how to act around them. So there's a big
Speaker 7: need to teach people how to be predators savvy again.
Speaker 7: So I give an example seals and sea lions. They've
Speaker 7: come back tremendously. I mean since marine mail were Protection
Speaker 7: Act in nineteen seventy three, they went from being on
Speaker 7: the verge of extinction to being fully recovered. So now
Speaker 7: it's not uncommon to be at the beach and I
Speaker 7: have a sea lion haul out. Now, in some cases
Speaker 7: the porreonotals are sick. I've seen people go place their
Speaker 7: toddler next to them to take a picture of that. Now,
Speaker 7: at what point did we think that that was a
Speaker 7: good idea. That animal laying on the beach looks so
Speaker 7: cute is actually an ocean wolf. It's got canines about
Speaker 7: three inches long. Oh God, So these are the sorts
Speaker 7: of things we have to fix. Like the family driving
Speaker 7: a Yellowstone and they see a bear eating out of
Speaker 7: a garbage bag on the side of the road, and
Speaker 7: they pull over their car and they roll down the
Speaker 7: window and they give their kid a cracker to feed
Speaker 7: to the bear. Oh god, and they take a picture
Speaker 7: of that. When did we think that was okay?
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 7: So these are the things that we got to work on.
Speaker 6: So don't be fearless, but be smart.
Speaker 7: Be predators smart. Right, it's so cool to be able
Speaker 7: to see these animals, but we got to give them
Speaker 7: their space, and we have to remember their job. They're
Speaker 7: a predator, so that we don't become part of the
Speaker 7: food chain. As long as we're smart, we should be
Speaker 7: able to do that. We did it before in our
Speaker 7: ancient history. We can do it again.
Speaker 6: But of course, being predator savvy isn't the same thing
Speaker 6: as being terrified of an extinct megalodon and now watching
Speaker 6: Shark week. Just take it with a big, big fat
Speaker 6: grain of salt.
Speaker 7: Entertainment wise, enjoy the entertainment that, just be aware that
Speaker 7: the educational value may not quite be of the same
Speaker 7: CLOrk content.
Speaker 6: Sure, thank you so much for debunking so much fun. Flame.
Speaker 6: You are amazing in your field. Thank you so much
Speaker 6: for doing this.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this world. So remember if you have a stupid question,
Speaker 6: ask a smart people because seriously, they love talking about
Speaker 6: it and that's how they got smart and just asking
Speaker 6: you a question as smart as it is now. To
Speaker 6: learn more about doctor Lowe's work, you can google shark
Speaker 6: Lab Long Beach. It'll pop right up. He's also on
Speaker 6: Twitter and Facebook at CSULB Shark Lab. That's cal State
Speaker 6: University Long Beach Shark Lab. You can watch the telemetry
Speaker 6: trackers of white sharks, shovel headed guitarfish, sea turtles. It's
Speaker 6: kind of like find my friends. That's at SCA tt
Speaker 6: N dot org. And I'm going to throw a link
Speaker 6: in the show notes to all this stuff. Don't worry.
Speaker 6: Please do not write this down if you're driving now.
Speaker 6: Ologies is at patreon dot com slash Ologies if you
Speaker 6: want to join the question club, I include as many
Speaker 6: as time allows, and we're also at Ologies on Instagram
Speaker 6: and Twitter. I'm at Ali Ward with one L on
Speaker 6: both the Ologies podcast. Facebook group is poppin' off. Thank you,
Speaker 6: Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admining You're both wonderful
Speaker 6: and I love you. Ologiesmarch dot com has your body
Speaker 6: actually covered, and again the code for the ten percent
Speaker 6: off sale through July is camp Ologies. Thank you Shannon
Speaker 6: Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for being such rock stars. Thank
Speaker 6: you Stephen Ray Morris, who's been under the weather. And
Speaker 6: when I expressed I was afraid that editing this on
Speaker 6: a tight turnaround would kill him, he texted me, You're
Speaker 6: not going to kill me with a lot of ease
Speaker 6: like me, and I hope he's okay, Stephen, please sleep.
Speaker 6: The music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of
Speaker 6: the band Islands. And you know each episode I tell
Speaker 6: you a secret at the end, and I'm just going
Speaker 6: to button here to add a timely updated secret. Today
Speaker 6: is July thirteenth. I'm recording this in a very hot,
Speaker 6: hot audio booth. I got married two and a half
Speaker 6: days ago. But the secret is is the morning of
Speaker 6: my wedding, I waxed my mustache. But after I had
Speaker 6: arrived at the venue, I discovered that I miss one
Speaker 6: hair that I did not want to be there and
Speaker 6: I had to ask the makeup artist. I was like, hey,
Speaker 6: can you see this? And he was like, m oh, yes,
Speaker 6: I got you. And so there I was with like
Speaker 6: an updo and a nice fancy rob looking very lovely
Speaker 6: but having a mustache, hair plucked anyway. You know what,
Speaker 6: let's have a palette cleansing much less personal, happy secret too.
Speaker 6: This one is from the original airing. Okay, so if
Speaker 6: you watch the Super Bowl performance a few years ago
Speaker 6: with Katy Perry dancing two upholstered seven foot tall sharks,
Speaker 6: one on either side of her, the left shark fucked up,
Speaker 6: could not dance and became this mascot for doing your
Speaker 6: best and just not nailing it. For years, the person
Speaker 6: inside the left shark costume would not speak publicly, and
Speaker 6: finally he did earlier this year. His name is Brian Gow.
Speaker 6: He was a dancer with Katy Perry for five years now.
Speaker 6: He's a hairstylist in West Hollywood. And he said he
Speaker 6: knew what he was doing. He was like, I'm a
Speaker 6: good dancer, but I just figured, you know what, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna miss this one up it'll be more interesting. So
Speaker 6: we got up there, screwed up the choreography. He looked
Speaker 6: like an idiot. Everyone was like, yes, left Shark, you
Speaker 6: are giving me life. It is okay to be myself.
Speaker 6: In this episode about accepting sharks, I think the Left
Speaker 6: Shark will usher us into a new era of sharks
Speaker 6: are people too. They are individuals. They are imperfect, and
Speaker 6: that is what makes them lovable. We are each our
Speaker 6: own little shark with our own little personalities. Okay, that's
Speaker 6: my secret. Byebye Paca, germantology, hobbiology, crypto zoology, lithology and zeinology, meteorology, mattology, anthology, seriology, sinology.
Speaker 7: That moment right there.
Speaker 3: One of the most viral.
Speaker 7: Is super Bold History Left Shark. It's the old half
Speaker 7: five show with Katie Perry and some times of the
Speaker 7: y Big Game. Back An you went road three years ago?
Speaker 7: Now breaking his silence, She's got it.
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