ExtinctZoo - The Shark Deadlier Than Jaws

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Great white, tiger shark, and bull shark. These three are what many consider to be the deadliest shark out there, to humans. However, there is a relatively unknown shark, that might be responsible for far more deaths than the big 3 combined...

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When you think of the scariest sharks, it's usually only three that really come to mind. The tiger shark, the bull shark, and of course, the Great White. Each of these guys are well known not only for their large sizes, but also for their fearsome appearances and occasional fearsome temperament, as it is their jaws, pun-incended, which are often those involved in unprovoked attacks on humans, even if shark attacks overall are quite rare. And collectively, they have together earned the informal nickname of the big three. with each being large-bodied, powerful apex predators that are largely found at coastal waters where human presence is fairly high.

And whenever you take a dip into the ocean, it's their faces, which you're usually hoping not to see under the weights. However, in some ways we have all been lied to, as there is a far less famous shark out there that is in many ways deadlyly to humans than any of the big three, being responsible for not only the most deaths, but also the only shark known to have caused a mass death event. And what's more is that if you were dropped into the middle of the ocean, which is one of my personal nightmares, it is actually this shark that you're most likely to run into, or rather swim into, and this would be the oceanic white tip shark. On paper, you might not consider this species of carcourinus to be all that scary at first. Seeing it compared to the big three, it's a bit smaller, with the average adult based on some studies being no greater than 150 pounds or 70 kilograms, so less than the average American, while they only measure out to about 100 inches. or three meters.

But this is just the average. They can't obviously get much larger, with the record for now having measured more than four meters or 13 feet long. And while it wasn't weighed, it is thought to have been over 400 pounds, perhaps even considerably more. But the thing about white tips is that many people think they can even get larger than this, seeing that these catchers were made close to shore, which is not the main stopping ground for these jaws, as unlike the big three, the oceanic white tip, per its name, has evolved

to inhabit the deep wide ocean. And when I say that, I don't mean that it lives super far down in the ocean. ocean, rather that if you find yourself in the part of the ocean with a whole lot of nothingness beneath you and around you, there is an alarming chance that one of these guys isn't too far away, with it spending most of its time patrolling the uppermost layer of our oceans within the epipelagic or sunlight zone, usually not diving beneath 150 meters or 490 feet at the maximum. And it's not just a location that will help you identify this shark, as it also has a rather striking appearance that's hard to mix up.

For starters, it has a long or robust body and then iconic fins that are rounded, white-tipped, hence the name, and far longer than what's normally seen in sharks, turning them into biological gliders of sorts, but allows them to travel great distances in the open ocean, while conserving as much energy as possible, leading to excursions in which they can travel several thousand kilometers. And this adaptation has clearly served them for, well, a very long time, seeing that their earliest bones attributed to this species

date all the way back to the early Miocene, which began a whopping 23 million years ago, which for comparison, our genus alone isn't even that old, let alone our species. And something else that has helped them is a feature that makes sharks the furthest apex predators that they are. And that is, of course, they're great pearly whites, which in the case of the oceanic white tip operates as the most horrifying pair of knife and fork you can imagine. Unlike some animals have all the same teeth, this shark has two distinct morphs of teeth, with its upper and lower jaws having very different dentition. Now, the bottom is where the forks are, so you could say, as the teeth here are thin, elongated, and serrated only at the tip,

letting them act as essentially a hook that sinks in a prey and keeps them from escaping. Then on the flip side, the upper jaw is the knife, the damage dealer, so to speak, as the teeth here are far wider and robust, while also being razor-sharp and entirely serrated, allowing them to slice massive chunks off of prey with single bites, and causing catastrophic blood loss, limb removal, and in some cases, disembalment, and in a lot of cases, death. Now with this said, most of the time, prey for them consists of cephalopods like squid or various bony fish, such as tuna, mackerel, mahi-mahi, and barracuda.

However, because of its large expanse of environment where food is not a guarantee and always changing, the white tip is a very non-picky eater and will eat just about anything given the chance, which has led to it developing an opportunistic, rather aggressive behavior, which has, unsurprisingly, brought into conflict with humans over the years, and thus making it one of the more deadly sharks. The thing is, though, we don't exactly know how many deaths this shark is really responsible for, as it's mostly involved with incidents that happened far out at sea, such as shipwrecks or plane crashes, and thus making documentation rather difficult.

But one thing is for sure, which is that, since the ancient time still today, there have been plenty and plenty of shipwrecks, with one study even estimating the number to be over three freaking million. And so this history has led to it often being referred to as the shipwreck shark, as it was known to prey upon the dead and the living of sunken vessels, and was often reported in historical texts as being the shark most likely to follow any given ship in the ocean, something that was only exemplified by the fact that at the time, it was this shark that is actually considered to be the most abundant large predator on the entire planet, and of course one of the most aggressive sharks.

And as Jacques Constu, an oceanographer, who is literally credited with inventing modern scuba diving, so elegantly put it, it is this species that is the most dangerous of all sharks, which is perhaps not as stretch to say, considering that the white tip has been involved in the most deadliest singular shark attacks and human history. And the most famous example of this has to do with the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. A heavy cruiser, which is fun, perhaps not so fun fact, was also the ship that delivered the atomic bomb from the U.S. to the Tienian Island during World War II. And it was actually this very mission that would come to haunted, as the mission itself was treated with top secrecy,

and on the 30th of July 1945, the ship was struck by two torpedoes launched from a Japanese submarine after it had delivered the bomb. And these torpedoes caused massive damage and ultimately sink the ship, killing about 300, while the remaining 890, were then sent straight in the ocean. And the problem here, beyond being stranded in the ocean, was that given the secrecy of the mission, the U.S. would not learn on the boat's fate for days, resulting the survivors living in constant hell day and night. As along with... Staples Preferred Business Membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about. With Staples preferred, get free delivery, no minimums.

Staples Preferred unlocks up to 3% back. Plus 10% savings on print and exclusive wireless offers. One less thing on your plate. Actually, a lot less. Visit staples.ca slash preferred. That was easy. Sun exposure, dehydration, and starvation. They also had to deal with sharks,

something the survivors described as far more terrifying than the Japanese. When I say sharks, I really mean to emphasize the plural part, as this believed that hundreds of oceanic white tips in tiger sharks descended upon the wreckage. Now at first they fed mainly on the supplies and already dead victims, but then they eventually turned on living as well, resulting in a horrifying feeding frenzy that lasted for days. An accounts of the event are brutal, with the reports stating that there was a constant cacophony of screaming men day and night while the sharks attacked, usually removing their legs or disemboweling them, leading to the waters around the stranded sailors turning red.

And though, like I said, tiger sharks were present, it is a very important. believed that the vast majority of the attacks on the living came from the white tips, not the tiger sharks, who while usually hunt alone, in this case it all congregated together for a blowout of death and misery. And as the number of survivors dwindled, the intensity of attacks also thankfully decreased. But still, even then, it was reported that silence would be periodically broken by screams. Unsurprisingly, and perhaps morbidly interesting, those that lived said the attacks seemed to be worse during the late afternoon and at night, rather than in the morning. By the fourth day, only 300,000.

16 of the original survivors were still left alive, who were then by pure chance spotted by a U.S. plane that landed in the water to help out against orders, as even from the sky, he observed sharks actively attacking the sailors. And ultimately was also this pilot that would eventually guide a U.S. destroyer to the survivors, and thus ending their horrible ordeal. With all this said, given the nature of the event, it is impossible to say how many of the 890 men had really been killed by the White Tips versus dying from exposure, drowning, etc. But the number usually ranges from dozens to up to 150.

And frankly, based off of the reports I read, I would imagine that it's more on the higher end. But whatever the case, even if, only dozens have been killed, that's still the equivalent of years of other shark attacks in just a couple days. As across the big three, it's believed that on average, they only kill around eight people per year. And again, this was just one single incident of four days. And this clearly is a reoccurring pattern, as there is another similar event that happened that far less people know about, which was the sinking of the RMS.

Nova Scotia. This catastrophe also took place during World War II and involved the ship that was originally a cruise liner, but had been repurposed to transport troops. And in 1942, while traveling within the Indian Ocean, it was struck by a German new boat, sinking it and plunging its passengers and crew into the waters. Ironically, the majority of those on board were actually allies of the Germans, in this case Italian prisoners of war, while then guards and other crew were present as well, including two South Africans, who knew what could be waiting in the abyss. And, uh, they were still. sadly right. One account stated that the first incident occurred after a lone swimmer in the

wreckage, suddenly started wildly yelling and was then pulled under the surface, with only bloody bubbles coming back up. And what followed that was pure carnage, and on a similar scale to the USS Indianapolis, as relatively quickly a large shoal of sharks emerged. And part of the problem is, was that the ship had sunk off of the Mozambique channel, which is home to the Mozambique current, which is a current of warm surface water that attracts a gop-smack amount of sharks, including for our protagonist, the White Tips, which the survivors specifically pinpointed as the primary aggressors in this incident. Over the course of the next day, many were pulled down to Davy Jones' locker. And while ship, what reached the area just one day after the boat had gone down, the vast majority

of passengers had already perished, with 858 of the 1,052 people on board, having died. And during rescue operations, it was reported that rescuers were surrounded by hundreds of corpses, many of them bearing sides of shark bites. And while the deaths directly attributed to sharks are hard to estimate, it does seem quite high. In fact, the captain of the U-boat himself even said that he and his crew were appalled by the sight of survivors trying to cling onto a submarine in order to escape the shark attacks. All survivors on RAF stated that one by one, swimmers would scream, stick their hands in the air and then disappear, only for a red blob to later emerge. What's more is that one estimate even stated that of the 750 Italian prisoners that were on the ship,

up to a quarter, or around 187, were devoured by sharks. And as one person would later recollect, this was the worst shark attack event that the Indian Ocean had ever witnessed. And let me just reemphasize, these are just two famous examples. They do not account for all the other millions of shipwrecks and plane crashes that have happened in history. But here is the interesting thing. If those exact events happen again today, or any other ship or plane wreck for that matter,

the amount of human deaths would probably be lower. And that's because the white tip has been dead. estimated by human activities since the 1950s, being one of the most affected sharks. As well, it could once have numbered in the millions upon millions, it's believed that up to 95%, even maybe more, of the global population has vanished since the 50s, with both accidental catching, as well as purposeful catching for its sought-after long fins, being the main reason, with the species now being considered critically endangered. And to some, this could seem like it's good news. And if you're in a shipwreck, I suppose it would be, since your chance of survival

would probably go up. But overall, the decimation of the white is, but overall the decimation of the reputation and history or not, is actually a bad thing for humans overall. As besides the food and resources that it can provide, the white tip, given its once abundant numbers and large range, was also a huge part of maintaining the open ocean's environment, keeping search and prey from overpopulation, while also maintaining the number of small to medium-sized predators that existed as well. And so as they continue to dwindle, this balance they upheld is being pushed more and more to the precipice and can lead to problems for humans far greater than the odd shark attack

here or there, which is thankfully why there are recovery programs and organizations pushing to save them. But only time will tell if it's enough to save this mighty predator. A mighty predator is navigated the Earth's water for millions upon millions of years. Thanks for watching and until next time.