Sharks: Bites against humans may be a case of mistaken identity

Cases of sharks biting people are uncommon, and researchers assume they might occur when the marine predators confuse us for different species

By Chen Ly

People and seals look remarkably comparable within the water from a terrific white shark’s perspective, suggesting that shark bites on people could also be a case of mistaken identification.

Though shark bites on people are extraordinarily uncommon, they trigger a major and disproportionate quantity of public concern.

“By higher understanding why sharks are biting folks we will give you higher mitigation applied sciences which might be much less invasive for sharks and different marine life, while being efficient for people,” says Laura Ryan at Macquarie College in Australia.

Ryan and her colleagues made separate video recordings of a seal and a sea lion swimming of their tanks at Taronga Zoo’s aquarium in Sydney, Australia, and likewise recorded folks swimming and paddling on a surfboard in a tank. They used a static digital camera fastened to the underside of every tank, wanting up, and a digital camera mounted to an underwater scooter that mimicked the motion of a terrific white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), one of many three foremost shark species accountable for shark bites on people.

To evaluate the visible similarity of the surfers and animals from the attitude of juvenile nice white sharks, that are accountable for almost all of shark bites, the crew analysed the video recordings utilizing a mannequin of the sharks’ visible system, considering their color blindness and incapacity to see element.

The crew discovered that the sharks would see little distinction between the movement of people swimming, people paddling on surfboards and seals and sea lions swimming. The crew additionally discovered that seals and sea lions with their fins out regarded comparable in form to human swimmers and surfers.

These findings present that nice white sharks might discover it arduous to visually distinguish people, seals and sea lions from under, supporting the concept that shark bites are instances of mistaken identification.

“Sharks have this historic unhealthy public notion, as senseless, man-eating animals. We’re displaying that that’s not the case,” says Ryan. “They’re following what their visible system is telling them is potential prey.”

Daryl McPhee at Bond College in Australia says: “Whereas we will by no means get rid of unprovoked shark chew, the work contributes to designing additional evidence-based visible approaches which will scale back the chance of a white shark chew occurring.”

Journal reference: Journal of the Royal Society Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2021.0533

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