Shark Words

 What do they have in common?     When you watch the behaviour of many different wild animal species over long periods of time, you notice parallels which might not otherwise be seen. Having observed both species in the wild for many years in many different situations, I found a remarkable similarity between the behaviour of a flock of crows and a fleet of three dozen sharks. Though these animals are far apart on the evolutionary tree, it appears that their behaviour was similar because it had a common cause: both sharks and crows were angry.     The crows had systematically bullied the five off-spring of the local raven couple while they were maturing, and then the raven youngsters left the area late in the summer. But one of them returned in early winter, and when she did, the crows congregated around her in the trees, and when she alighted on the ground, they descended, prevented her from taki...

  In April, 2016, National Geographic featured an article entitled “ The War on Science, ” which questions why many scientific claims face a storm of opposition from the public. It explains that these criticisms result from a tendency to believe in one's religious or political position, rather than in the facts, which is a recent finding by Dan Kahan of Yale University. Yet, the problems with modern science which might contribute to this public attitude were not examined--when one looks out across the ravaged earth, National Geographic's statement “Modern science is based on things it got right,” appears in a different light. In addition to widespread pollution and the destabilization of the climate, human activity has caused the sixth mass extinction, the tropical forests needed to support the life-giving atmosphere are devastated, and the oceans are showing signs of ecological collapse. Why, at the height of science's glory, has it had such a destructive eff...

While I preferred to study sharks directly through underwater observation, shark researchers often choose tagging methods which allow them to gain certain types of data remotely. The advantages of this method are evident, but the loss of contact with the animal itself results in a dramatically impoverished understanding of them. A good example is the recently announced study concluding that grey reef sharks swim at different depths depending on the phase of the moon. (link here) No mention of the effect of the moon on the sharks' general behaviour or subjective states was mentioned. The trouble is that it was not just ignored, it was not even seen. So the study is a dismal, one dimensional report, that might as well refer to robots, for all the understanding it provides of sharks. The hype with which the “finding” was announced also failed to acknowledge the many others over time who have noted that sharks, like other animals, use both of this planet's sources of...