Stuart Nettle June 29, 2009

I read with interest last week that scientists in South Africa made the grand discovery that Great White Sharks hunt like serial killers. The study declared that when sharks hunt for seals they 'hang back and observe, hunt strategically, and learn from previous attempts', just like serial killers do apparently. I'll wager this study was well funded, and I'll also wager that the accompanying news story did a roaring trade on the international media rounds. How could it not? It's got two big-name attention grabbers rolled into one head-turning headline: 'sharks' and 'serial killers'. If they could've somehow spun a celebrity angle Jacko would never have got a run at page one. But that was last week, the shark story has come and gone and now we've got the obligatory wash-up of Jacko's death to entertain us – lawsuits and custody battles. Just quickly: I don't wanna sound like a heartless bastard, but am I the only one that just doesn't care about Jacko? Sung a few toons and moonwalked into a bubble of self-loathing and weirdness. Says more about the cult of celebrity than any apparent 'gift' he gave us. Bah! Anyway, back to serial killing sharks and the scientists who study them... My take is that the link between sharks and serial killers is just anthropomorhism gone wild. Settle, settle, I'll explain that word. Anthropomorhism: giving human characteristics to non-human creatures . Think of Far Side cartoons with cows acting like humans. Or when I named my dog Dave and spoke to him in English. Overlaying human characteristics onto nature helps us to understand it. It helps us to relate to it. But this serial killing shark malarky is just ridiculous. It's seriously clutching at straws. Of course sharks 'hunt strategically and learn from previous attempts', they've been around for 400 million years, most of it at the top of the food chain. You don't have that sort of success by just lobbing at the nearest seal. And 400 million years is a lot longer than humans. Even serial killing humans. This study does nothing but increase our angst about sharks. I bet the newspapers are upset they weren't armed with this story when shark hysteria overtook Australia last summer. The mileage they could've squeezed out of that! During that little episode there were a few voices trying to put us at ease by telling us sharks are just doing what is instinctive to them, and that the chance of being attacked is miniscule. But now you have egghead scientists saying that sharks are swimming serial killers. Yeah, stay calm... After considering all of this I did my own little study. And I've got some alarming news: doves are killers...maybe even serial killers. Yes, doves. We might have bestowed upon them the international symbol for peace, but we got it wrong. They kill. They wake up early and prey on innocent worms and hapless crickets. They coldly hunt them, and then mercilessly kill them. There is no peace when doves are about. Doves, like sharks, have an instinct to eat. Which means they kill. Perhaps they operate similar to serial killers? Who knows? Look into it scientists, 'Serial Killer Doves' is a headline I want to read.

Postscript: Last week, while I was reading about serial killer sharks, Glen Orgias went surfing at Bondi. Glen lost his hand to a shark after an attack at the same beach last summer, but his injuries have healed and he is back in the water. Whether the shark that attacked him was a serial killer or not hasn't been determined but, for the sake of hysteria, let's say it was.

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