Shark Week: Where the Sharks Appear More Intelligent than Humans

This week is Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, and it has been difficult to pry Josh away from all of the high quality programming. Some of my favorites:

·      A show about a guy who wants to show the world how harmless sharks are by putting them into a trance-like state, either by turning them upside down or placing his hands right under their snouts. Guess what? It doesn’t work! But then he feeds a shark by hand, and concludes that this proves even more clearly that sharks are harmless.

·      A 20 minute segment about a bunch of guys who are trying to get a great white shark to take a bite out of a tuna on a rope so that they can study the effects of the bite, particularly how big the bite is. Only, the sharks always end up chewing off all but the tail. In the end, they get out the jawbones from a dead great white shark and close it over the tuna to show how big the bite is. Fail!

·      A show about how to survive shark attacks. The retired navy seal, who is constantly jumping into a swarm of sharks, ends the show by locking himself into a shark cage with an eight foot shark. He then shows and explains what to do to keep from getting bit by the shark. He finally wrestles the shark through a small opening in one side of the cage, and I’m thinking, “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do when it happens to me.”

And of course, there are countless other really stupid stunts where divers practically beg sharks to bite them. After a couple hours of these shows, I started to really feel sorry for the sharks, and also to admire them for their restraint. If I were one of the sharks on these shows, I would probably bite someone just to find out what stupid tastes like. On second thought, I don't have to be a shark on shark week to taste stupid. I could just bite myself, since my willingness to sit through these crazy shows suggests I'm not very bright, either.