Ologies with Alie Ward - Selachimorphology (SHARKS) with Chris Lowe

Episode Date: July 24, 2018

SHAAAARKS. Leading shark researcher Dr. Chris Lowe dishes about bad shark PR, behind-the-scenes Jaws trivia, his thoughts on Sharknado, surfing safety, immune system marvels, cannibal twins, shark personalities, sea sex, and knife teeth. Alie learns that sharks are not the ocean's sociopaths but true evolutionary marvels who suffer from sensationalized reputations and sometimes inside-out butts. Listen up as a science primer during this, the holy Week of the Shark.(Note: the study of sharks can is also called elasmobranchology, a distinction which could also include skates and rays. Both -ologies are difficult to spell.)Dr. Lowe's Twitter and FacebookDr. Chris Lowe's SharkLab at Cal State University Long BeachTrack sharks and fish and turtles at Scattn.orgMore episode sources & linksBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's your two talkative petty cab driver who eerily guessed your astrological sign. It's Ali Ward, back with another fresh as hell episode of oligies. This is the quickest turnaround ever in the history of the show ever, and I guess given its oceanic vibe, I like to think of it as some treasure that washed up on the beach, delivered to your senses while it's still shimmering with sea froth before it starts to stink. Now, I have been tracking this oligist for months, and he was always off on expeditions

in remote corners of the earth, being awesome. And we had an appointment to talk sharks last Friday. And then I realized, boy, howdy, this week is shark week. This is perfect timing. I don't mean shark week like anything uterine. It's actually shark week on Discovery, and Nat Chio has a shark week. And then he had to cancel because of work stuff. It's fair enough.

But then he said he could record just hours before I got on a plane. So I drove my ass giddily down to Long Beach, and I hung out in his lab. And I'm now back home. I'm turning around asides. I'm having the amazing Steven Ray Morris edit this in probably a Red Bull induced mania. Honestly, we couldn't be happier about it. It's very exciting. But before we get to the episode, some thanks and some pleas and some thanks again.

So first off, thanks to the patrons for making this whole show happen pretty much at patreon.com slash oligies. You can be a member of the club that knows what episodes are coming up next and submits questions to the oligists and sees behind the scenes photos from their labs. And also, you help keep the pod free and available to all. You can also support by putting oligies on your human body. You can go to oligiesmerch.com and you still have a few more days to cash in on the July sale.

I was like, let's have a summer sale, 10% off everything. Your whole dang order with the code camp oligies, there's backpacks and bikinis. You can put oligy stuff on your butt. You can also support with no coin at all just by subscribing. You can review or rate. You can tweet about it. You tell your dentist, whatever. Also as you know, I creepily read your reviews and then I prove it each week by reading you

one. This week, fantasy football gal says, help. Now I have an oligies addiction. Guys, I can't stop with this podcast. Send help or don't actually please don't and leave me to keep bathing my mind and oligies. So nice. So she says she got hooked after listening to the two-parter on Fiorology, which resulted in a four-hour long post-episode discussion on the topic with my mom herself, a psychologist.

And she says, and because this pod normally drops on Monday, I now actually look forward to everyone's least favorite day of the week. Technically, it drops Monday, 9 p.m. Pacific time, depending on where in the world you are. So thank you to everyone who left reviews this week. I read every single one of them. Sometimes they make me cry because I feel so appreciated. So thank you for that.

Okay, now back to Salakomphology. I know it sounds like your drunk cousin had a bunch of scrabble letters and is doing her best to convince everyone that it's a triple word score, but really it's a term. It's a rare one, but it exists. So it comes from the ancient Greek for having the appearance of cartilaginous fish. And what does it mean? It means we got a shark spurt in the house. What a shark expert he is.

So he's been studying sharks for decades. He's appeared on so many TV shows about sharks. It's absurd. And he's been a marine biology professor at Cal State University Long Beach for 20 years. He's tall, slim, with close cropped hair, and what I imagine is a perennial tan. He greeted me this past Sunday, today, the day I'm recording this, and he showed me around the Shark Lab. This is a facility of these gurgling seawater tanks and high-tech telemetry devices and cameras,

and suspended in the rafters as a nod to the past was a vintage shark-shaped submersible. It was amazing. So we sat down in his tidy office, and I asked him all kinds of stupid shit, and he answered with affable wisdom. So get ready to deep dive into a world of ancient badasses, eye lasers, behind-the-scenes movie trivia, inside-out butts, cannibal twins, seeming immortality, their sea kink, surfer intuition, lottery odds, and your aquatic, many-toothed new role models during this, their week, Shark Week, with Salachymorphologist Dr. Chris Lowe.

It's actually the worst week. It's great in that we celebrate sharks. Yeah. The way we celebrate them is sometimes not great. So here's your mic. These are stage mics. Yeah, be close. Yep.

Just got it. Talking to it. Yep. Yeah. Thank you for doing this this week of all weeks. Is this your, is this week your nightmare? Is Shark Week your nightmare? So I was quoted in an article recently saying, Shark Week is like my Christmas.

Actually it's more like my Halloween. So, it's great in one way in that people are celebrating sharks and they're very excited about sharks. And that's something that I find great. However, the Halloween part comes from the horror that's also partly created in that same kind of tone. So it makes it really difficult to educate people about sharks and to help dispel some of the myths about them when we still do a lot of fear mongering in some of the media.

So it's really challenging. I'll give you an example. So here I am on a Discovery Channel show talking about why shark conservation is so important and sharks are vital to the ecosystem and why people need to protect them. And in the background here, it just doesn't match, right? So it becomes very frustrating and a little conflicting for the public to understand, well, wait a minute, is it about conservation or are we supposed to be scared? And so what made you love sharks so much?

What was the moment where you're like, sharks, I'm on your team. So, you know, as a person who grew up fishing and loving to fish and I caught thousands of fish, the first one I caught, the first shark I caught, I was like, this is different. There's something about this. This is very different from all the other fish I'd catch. And it actually forced me to go to the library. I was not a good student. I had a school.

Really? How old were you when you went and started looking into it? Probably about nine, nine or ten. And then I went to the library and I remember finding a book about sharks. I'm trying to figure out what kind of shark this was. And then I was looking through this book and I'm like, oh, my God, there's all these cool things about these animals. They're like fish, but they're a different type of fish.

And there was just something about that that just sucked me in. Is it crazy to you that you get to do this for a living? Like you're one of the leading shark experts in the world. Like you drop your name and people are like, oh, oh, Dr. Chris, and yeah, he's legit. Like, is it crazy to you that you're that dude now? Yes, I have to pinch myself every day. But but part of it is I am so lucky to have the job that I have.

I really am. I absolutely love what I do. And it's not just about the sharks. It's about teaching other people about sharks and teaching other people about science and why we do it. So Dr. Lowe grew up off the coast in New England in a family of working class, honest, cool fishermen. He told me his favorite day was Wednesday because it was hamburger night.

All other nights were seafood nights because that's just what his family did. And that's what they expected him to do, just be a commercial fisherman or a carpenter. But he really wanted to study marine biology and he became the first person in his family to graduate college, getting a bachelor's in marine bio in Rhode Island, a master's in biology in Long Beach. And then his PhD studying hammerhead sharks in Hawaii, which sounds like something only the guy in those dozaki's commercials would do.

But it's a real life and he lived it. Hammerhead sharks in Hawaii. OK. And so when it comes to shark outreach, what do you think is the most important thing that you do? Because that is one thing I feel like humanity can get behind. It's like, if there is a villain we can all be scared of and pissed at. It's going to be sharks like we can't even be mad at bees anymore. We're like, oh, save the bees, but no one's like, save the sharks.

Everyone's like, let's kill all of them. Well, I think it's getting better. OK, that's the exciting part. I think things are starting to change. It's just taken longer than I think many of us would have liked to see happen. And my best example are whales. So 150 years ago, if we walk down like San Pedro or we walk down New Bedford and you ask people what kind of animal they thought a whale was,

they would say horrible things. Whales were their demons. They're, you know, all their horrible animals. They kill people. Moby Dick, right? So you think of the image portrayed in Moby Dick. So if, like me, you have not yet gotten around to reading Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick, it's about this whale who was real angry, just a son of a bitch. And it was based on a real actual albino whale by the name of Mocha Dick,

who, despite sounding like your friend's barista ex-boyfriend, was in fact a sperm whale and is said to have been a renown monster who evaded pursuers, was white as wool and just cruised the seas with 19 harpoons hanging off of him, like grass clippings on a sticky thigh. Didn't even notice. Now, for a long time, people were like, get bent, whales. And their populations declined. OK, so around the 70s, when whale populations were really in the tank,

they got the perfect PR makeover. Whales went from being these demon evil animals to, oh, my God, they're like humans. They have babies. They nurse them. They have little eyelashes. They're intelligent social animals. And I thought, if we can do it for whales, why can't we do that for sharks? So I think that we're in that motion. We're heading in that direction.

But it's really difficult when the a lot of the programming still pushes the fear factor. So Discovery's Shark Week, who is in no way sponsoring the show, has been this cable mainstay for like 30 years. They have shows like Bloodline, The Spawn of Jaws. And even a few years ago, ransom docu-fiction, a.k.a. fake news about the extinct megalodon shark resurfacing. And later they were like, oh, yeah, sorry, that was like not real. We thought, you know, Matt Geo has also joined the Blood Fun with two weeks of shark fest.

They have shows like Shark Kill Zone and my personal favorite, Sharkatras, about the sharks near Alcatraz. Now, the point is whales, cute and smart, sharks are scary, steely eyed murderers. Their brand, it is like the sociopaths of the sea. Do you think that if sharks had eyelids, their whole story would be better? Well, they do have eyelids. They do. Yeah, of course, some do.

Some do. They're called little nicotain membranes, and they'll fold them up to protect their eyes. They just fold the wrong way. So maybe that's it. Maybe they look too alien to us. But I think that's only part of it. You know, like dolphins have the cute little smile. Yeah.

You know, if we can only get some sharks with cute little upturned jaws, maybe that would help. Don't say Jaws. Jaws. Don't say Jaws. Yes. But I think, you know, part of it is being slowly demystified. People are starting to see sharks as being, you know, just like any other fish in the

ocean, although they have a very different role than many other fish. So quick question. Is a shark a fish? It is, but about 400 million years ago, they split off from bony fish and sharks instead of bone, they have skeleton made of lightweight and sprungy cartilage. They also don't have swim bladders for buoyancy, but they use their fins, kind of like airplane wings, and they have these real fatty, oily livers to keep them afloat. And they range in size from great white sharks, more on that name later, which are

like 20 feet in length to these itty bitty, eight, nine inch dwarf lantern sharks and Panama ghost cat sharks, which kind of both sound like D&D characters. But the point is, they're not all the stuff of cinematic nightmares. So it's getting people to think along those lines. And do you think this all started with the Jaws franchise or have people been kind of demonizing sharks for, you know, before the 70s? Well, actually, I think that our perception of sharks and that fear goes way back. It goes back to the way humans portray all predators.

So, you know, imagine back in the, you know, early cave days and the men would go out and hunt some wild animals and they would come back and tell these stories about these crazy vicious animals they saw. And of course, the families that are sitting around listening to these stories are going, wow, that's so scary. And they're describing this animal. And and the reality of it is people listen when people talk about that because your brain gives you a little squirt of happy juice when you're scared.

Happy juice, a.k.a. adrenaline, a.k.a. nor epinephrine is a hormone that's gleeced out from your adrenal glands during fight or flight. So for more on this and why fear is a very lucrative business, you can listen to the two part phyrology episode with Mary Poff and Roth, who is a life changer. OK, back to adrenaline. And it tells you to pay attention to characters that may be important for your survival. So now what happens is if people don't encounter that animal, they can embellish

the stories, right? Because the chances of that person ever seeing the animal themselves may be very low. Right. And now the storytellers are getting rewarded because people are listening to them. So now they can embellish the stories. They can go on and on about the gnashing jaws and and think about whalers and fishermen that were out to sea for years and they would come back and they would be telling these stories to their families and their families are like, oh,

my God, these sharks sound horrible. But now as people began to see those animals more, as they began to encounter them more, those things don't match. So, you know, television's played off that. Jaws played off that. I mean, when you think about the book and the movie, you know, they're describing something that people were envisioning in their head, right? And you only had to show a few pictures to help seal that deal.

So the problem was, as we knew very little about sharks at the time, Jaws was written and we've learned a lot more about sharks since then. So now it's getting a little harder to embellish the stories. Nonetheless, our brain is programmed to get a little squirt of happy juice when we're scared. So I think that's what makes it so hard to move away from sharks being these scary animals and convincing people that they're important and they're actually not as dangerous as they're made out to be.

Hit me with some stats. We always hear that vending machines collect 385 people a year and sharks kill five. Yeah, yeah. So that those stats, there's tons of them out there. You know, you're more likely to dive in a car accident, driving on the four or five, going to the beach, obviously, in the parking lot, you're more likely to be run over by another driver than you ever would by encountering shark. So the thing is, it's an irrational fear, right?

Because the stats clearly tell us that the probability is crazy, crazy low. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than you do of being bitten by a shark. So side note, your odds of getting struck by lightning are just one in 3,000. Getting injured by a toilet about one in 10,000. Now, death by sharks, one in 3.7 million. And while one in 15 lottery tickets will win something, the odds for winning the good stuff like the mega millions jackpots, you ready for this one in 302 million.

So way less likely than a shark attack because like winning actual money in the lottery is like pretty much like kind of kind of never. And that's with millions of people going to beach and shark populations coming back in some places. So, you know, it's kind of frustrating sometimes to put out those stats and then still have people go, I'm afraid to go in my pool. Really? Really? I get that.

Are you people are afraid to go in their pool? Absolutely. Do they know there's no sharks in their pool or are those people who have sharks in their pool? No, I don't think they have sharks in their pool. It's that fear of water. It's the fear of being in water. And, you know, that adds another layer. We're a terrestrial animal, right?

So when we go in the ocean, we're in a foreign place for many of us. And, you know, it's interesting because many of the people water people. These are surfers, divers, swimmers. They spend huge amounts of time in the ocean and they feel very comfortable in the ocean. You know, very few of them ever tell me they're afraid of sharks. Do you think that the people who are innately or feel innately afraid of sharks just are like scuba diving? Not for me. Miniature golf?

Sure. Do you know what I mean? Do they self select? I think so. OK. But but I think we can change that. Those are aspects of our behavior that we kind of put on ourselves. So is part of your role as a shark spurt, if you will, to give out enough facts so it counterbalances the fear? Well, I think that's an important part of it.

So the more we learn about sharks and the more people begin to see them in a different way, like like they would see any other animal, like maybe a dog or a cat or a mountain lion or anything like that, the more they know, the less they're going to fear. And we see that we I see it particularly in kids. I talk to thousands of kids every year because they're actually the best. So they quite often haven't developed that fear yet. And sharks and the new dinosaurs.

So kids are really into sharks. Really? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that sharks are the new dinosaurs. That's so exciting. New dinosaurs. And they're still here. Twenty years ago, I was really worried at the track we were taking that this there would be a generation of Americans that would enter our coastal ocean and never get to see a shark.

And now I'm kind of excited that things are changing. There's a really good chance that this generation will be able to go in the ocean and actually see a shark in the wild. I love that for you. That's like amazing, good news. But that's true. But that's exciting. It really is. It really is. Because imagine here's well, think of it like, you know, coming to L.A. and going down Hollywood and seeing a movie star. Right.

That's what it will be like. People will be like, I was in the ocean. I saw dolphin ho hum. But I also saw a white shark. That was freaking awesome. I love that because if you go in Hollywood Boulevard, chances are you are not going to see your favorite celebrity. You're going to see a lot of other shit,

but you're not going to see anyone. That's very true. That's very true. But when you think of sharks, what kind of place do they hold in your heart? Like, when you think of a shark, what key words come to your mind? You know, they're just amazing. I mean, they're amazing. They've been around for 400 million years as a group, right? They've been they've seen the gnarly shit on the planet, right?

I mean, asteroids hitting the planet. They they've been through all these mass extinctions and they come out the other end of the pipe and they're still around. That's amazing. Yeah. So, you know, when you look at all the other life in the ocean and during some of those mass extinctions, we lost over 90 percent of the marine life was gone. Really? That much?

Huge, huge, huge extinction. Sharks are like, yeah, I'm still here. How do you like me now, bitch? So the question that I love to ponder is, what is it about them that makes them so resilient? What makes them so adaptable? So and those are the things they they have these characters, either part of their physiology or their morphology that just seem amazing.

And they're different from many of the other animals on the planet. So I think that's one of the things that that just puts me in awe. What are some of those characteristics? You know, sharks have an amazing immune system. It's very different from all over vertebrates. They have all these unique characters, their immune system. And I think that's one of their keys to their success. I mean, their ability to heal,

their ability to deal with pathogens in the ocean is just simply amazing. How does that work? Do they just have better T cells? Do they what what's happening in there? Well, you know, they're a innate immune system and other aspects of their immune system are very different. You know, there's still a lot of work being done right now. And, you know, just the way they heal.

So when sharks mate, males have to bite females to get them in a position to copulate, right? Didn't know that. The fuck, dude? OK, so now we're talking about teeth, right? A lot of biting and females, yes. And females aren't always willing to, you know, comply. And that's probably part of the sexual selection.

So females get a choice. If the male can't hang on, then you're not going to get to mate with me. But there's a lot of teeth involved, and therefore there's going to be a lot of tearing and tissue damage and things like that. Oh, my God. OK, so females' skin is twice as thick as males.

Is it seriously? Oh, yeah. Damn. And of course, you would need that, right? If you're going to mate, and a lot of females will mate with more than one male, because we now know from litters that there's sperm from more than one male.

So there's this polyandry going on, right? So there's multiple paternities. But the other part is how fast they heal from those things. So females get completely torn up. And then the question is, how do they heal so quickly? So there's been some really cool research being done by some colleagues in Florida. So evidently, sharks can recover from incisions super quick

because of the antiviral and antimicrobial properties of their skin's slimy protective film. It is a substance that rhymes with fuchus, and it's bleeped for decency. Every time you hear it, feel free to do a tiny imperceptible butt dance or take a swig of your pet fridge. So what happens is, literally within minutes of that injury,

that f***ing begins to pour into the wound, and it acts like a band-aid, like an antibiotic band-aid. And then the wound begins to heal outward. So, I mean, you can literally cut a shark into its body cavity. Sea water will get into its body cavity. It's not a sterile environment. That's crazy. But they have pores that lead into their body cavity.

So their body cavity is not sterile. So wait, that's like having... They're just getting sea water coming in and out, and their body cavity is like, it's all good. Don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. Also, that makes me think of a shark skin suit. And if you actually had a shark skin suit,

it was just covered in a layer of f***. That would be not good for formal wear, but... Man, you'd heal fast, right? You could tear it on a fence and be like, it's cool, give it a couple of minutes. Dr. Chris Lowe, right now, single-handedly making sharks lovable and math cool. He is a thought magician.

I just get so excited, even about math. Well, because there's math in sharks. Ooh, like what? They're covered in math. They're teeth. You know, they're a math problem, right? Because they have a never-ending rows of teeth. And the teeth keep falling out.

And of course, how old do sharks live? Well, we don't know. But now we're coming up with new techniques to figure out how long sharks live, like sleeper sharks, like Greenland sharks that have been aged to 470 years old. How do they find out that that's how old they are? Really cool. From the dead ones, you can take their eye lens,

and then you can run a laser through that, and you can measure when radioactive carbon was in the atmosphere from when we did bomb tests back in the 50s. Oh, my God. So it becomes a little chronometer, little time keeper. And then you can count these bands, the amount of carbon, radioactive carbon to non-radioactive carbon, and use that as a chronometer to go back.

Oh, my God. So 470 years old. That's the oldest vertebrate on the planet. That's really, that's super bananas, right? Now, are they doing this on deceased sharks, or can they do it on, okay. So they do find, if they find a deed one, they go like, okay, let's check it out.

Well, and the other thing is some of these sharks are caught in fisheries, right? So they're being caught, they're being used, they're already dead. It may as well take their eyes out and look at their lenses. And when researchers started to do that, they were like, whoa, how can this animal live to be that old? Well, sleeper sharks, some found in the Atlantic,

some found in the Pacific, some found off Antarctica, live in very cold, deep water. Okay. And what we know about things that live in cold, deep water is really cold, really dark, really old, because everything slows down, metabolism slows down, everything slows down. And when you do that,

you have the ability to live a very long time. Because you're just like slow. Everything, it's life and slow motion. They take forever to return emails. Exactly, exactly. So, and there's even some evidence that they may not even reach maturity until they're 120 years old.

Can you imagine having a teenage son for 120 years of your life, like picking up someone's socks and dirty dishes for over a century? Or from the shark's perspective, can you imagine having zits until you're 120 and mystery boners that you can't do anything about because you've a curfew? Not getting a driver's license until you're older

than any human on the planet. Just no wonder sharks are pissed. Maybe some of them are just cranky and horny and they're too young to get a job, but also old as shit. But again, 400 million years of evolution, right? So, they've got something wired and they've passed that on through those lineages. So, I think those are the things that,

the more I learn about them, the more I just go, wow, these are amazing animals. I understand why people are so interested in them. And then, what new thing can we figure out about them? And more importantly, how can they help us? Yeah, how can sharks help us? Well, you know, that's the thing. You know, the more we learn about their immune system

and their physiology, the more we learn that they've got some cool tricks that other animals don't. Yeah, like a million revolving knife teeth, their punk is a mother. And as we begin to understand those tricks, there's ways that we can use those tricks ourselves for developing new treatments for infections and cancers and all sorts of things.

Yeah, now, a few patrons asked this, and I had this question as well. Sharks, cancer, does it happen? It does. Sharks do get cancer. So, there's this big thing out there, sharks don't get cancer at all. That's not true. They do get cancers.

They do get them at lower frequencies than many other types of vertebrates. And of course, they have this amazing physiology that enables them to do that. But there's a lot of research being focused in that area right now. And a lot of it may come back to slow metabolisms, it may come back to, you know,

their ability to deal with antioxidants, can't wait to see what the next 20 years is going to show. And now, talk to me about their electric faces. Do they have magnets? What's going on? Well, it's not that they have magnets. They have the ability to detect electric fields. They have little volt meters in their face.

How does that even happen? Or do other animals have that? There are some other critters that have it. Dr. Platypus have these things. God's up there in a bathrobe, like... Let's see, all of them are big, but it is also eggs. Oh, I just don't want to. Get rid of the shame in its face.

So the bottom line is the ability to detect electric fields in water is easier, right? Because the fields conduct better in that media than they do in air. So and in seawater, they conduct even better. So the idea there is you can have a fish and that fish is full of ions, positive ion, negative ions,

and they create basically a biological battery. So every time the fish breeze, the field expands. And of course, sharks, as they swim through the water, can detect that electric field when they're close. So they have to be maybe a meter or two away to be able to detect that. So remember those eyelids you were talking about? Yeah.

So right before a shark goes in to bite something, it closes its eyes. It rolls back its nictotaining membrane to protect its eye. So how does it find a prey that's trying to escape it with its eyes closed? Well, it's using these electroreceptors to track its prey. So it's kind of like being in a cave.

And animals in a cave have either poor vision or no eyes at all. And yet they're able to survive and enhance their senses. In this case, they have an extra sense. And that's that electro sense. Sharks feeding with their eyes closed. Come on. So cute.

It's like rummaging in a cupboard with the lights off. Like, shoot, I know I shouldn't snack. But the bag of marshmallows is emitting electricity that helps you find it. And so in, let's say, I've heard of surfers wearing like shark bands that have electromagnetic fields coming off of them. Is that a hocus pocus or no?

No, no, some of it does work. But the bottom line is we've found, and there's been some research done that shows that sharks can habituate to it. So imagine it's like being in a building and then you go to a concert. You walk through these soundproof doors and suddenly you're just nailed with a sound.

So you're going to kind of be a little irritated by it, maybe disoriented by it and things like that. So that's how we think those fields are working in those cases. Now, but if you have a shark that's highly motivated, it will tolerate that. Now, will it keep you safe some of the time? Sure. But here's the danger in shark repellents. Quite often when people feel like they have a Superman's cloak,

something that makes them invincible, they do riskier things than they would do than if they had nothing at all. So this is where I have a kind of a problem with shark repellents. I think in most cases, if people just use good common sense, they'll be just as fine than if they use one of these devices. Is there a good common sense tactic? If you were to say, if you had a friend who's like,

I've started boogie boarding and surfing in cold waters, were there maybe sharks? Is there something that you can do that's smarter? Well, I think first of all, knowing that there's sharks in the water. So your brain is taking in information. You may look at the beach. You may look at the situation and go, you know what, just feels a little too creepy.

I'm not going to go in today. Hey, you know what, you just made a decision. However, you may do that every single day. You know there are sharks there and you go, I know they're here. I'm in the water. I'm trying not to do anything that would, you know, piss them off. And as long as I do that, it's worth the risk.

And I think that's how most of those water people feel. Oh, they use an intuition? I think so. I've had some come out. I know I've been in the water a couple of times in the evening, in particular, by myself. And those little hairs in the back of my neck start going up. And I'm going, okay, this could be a Jaws flashback, right?

I can hear the music in my head. Or my hindbrain is telling me something. And then I think, I think I'm going to get out of the water. Really? But that's a decision I make, right? Now, coming back to that concept of what should you do, maybe be safer, what we know based on statistics is that your chances of being bitten at a crowded beach are very low.

Oh, why is that? Well, we think that sharks don't like people. They're just like, they're just like misanthrobes. They'd rather be like, you know what, I'm more of an indoor kid. Well, you know, there's all that suntan lotion pouring off people and, you know, we're smelly and loud. I mean, if you're a shark and you're cruising by, you might go, I'm going to swing wide of this group, right?

Right, the hate parties. I hate, they hate parties. They're like, I'm not into it. Exactly. So, but the bottom line statistics tell us the crowded beaches, it's really rare. Okay. So, if you're worried about it, surf with a friend. Swim with a buddy, swim with 10.

The more the merrier, right? Most sharks, especially the predatory type that tend to target large prey, tend to isolate things, right? They're looking for something off by itself because it might be more vulnerable, might be easier to capture. Whereas if they're in a group, it becomes a little harder. Oh. So, these are some things that people can do and, you know, it should help keep them a little safer.

I mean, I had to ask this. And so did patron Ashley Perez. Now, should you ever become snacked on by a shark? Should you try to administer like a well-timed boop to the nose? Absolutely. 00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:27,520 So, you know, the bottom line is, I don't think you have to tell most people to do that. It's going to be reflex.

Yes. When something grabs you, your response is to hammer on it. And that's the best thing to do. And of course, if you're going to beat on that shark that's biting down on you, the best place to hit it are in its, around its senses, right? So, around the eyes, the nose, those are all very sensitive areas. And what has been kind of shown over and over again from people that have encountered these sorts of situations is that the sharks tend to release.

So, you know, that's generally the rule of thumb. If a shark, you know, comes at you, gets really close, bumps you or bites you. Have you ever had an encounter in the wild that was like either in a shark cage or watching something like what's been the most, what's been the craziest memory you've had? I would say when my wife, who's also a biologist, and I discovered that sharks suntan. What? Yes.

What? Yeah. That was, that was an accident. What? How do you know that they do? Are they just out there with like a Marie Claire magazine and like some jojoba oil? Well, actually, I was studying hammerheads, hammerhead sharks. And I was studying how they swim.

So, I would go catch them. These are baby hammerheads and I would put them in the shallow coral pond. Water's very clear and the sand's very white, you know, it's coral sand. And I would collect a bunch of hammerheads and I'd put them in this pond and then I would film them swimming so I could measure how faster tails beat and things like that. And then I told my wife, I said, look, I need to go get more sharks so I can increase my sample size. She said, let's go fishing. So, we go out, we catch new sharks, we bring them, we put them in the pond and we're standing

there together looking at the sharks going, oh my God, they're like different animals. So, kind of jokingly, we're like, maybe they're sun tanning. So, it just so happens that that summer, the world's experts on the effects of UV in the marine environment were at this marine lab we were working at. So, we started bringing them out to this pond and saying, hey, you know, we think these sharks are sun tanning and they are like, what are you talking about? Oh my God! The only animals known to sun tan are humans and a couple of weird, like, naked guinea pigs.

So, alongside fellow marine biologist Dr. Gwen Goodman-Loe, who is also his wife, P.S., adorable, he designed an experiment where they affixed little pieces of plastic onto the pectoral fins of hammerheads. Some of them blocked jesuvi, some pieces of plastic blocked all the light and then some that were clear and then they kept the sharkies there for one to three months, kind of like summer camp. After that time, we take the sharks out, remove the filters and they had tan lines. Oh my God! That's so tacky and amazing! That must have boggled your mind. Well, yeah. So, we actually got the cover of nature with that paper.

Oh my God, I'm looking above me. So, directly over my head on the wall was a framed magazine cover showing two sharks next to each other, one looking like my legs in winter and the other looking like wet asphalt. The headline read, Suntanned Hammerheads. That sounds like a band that's going to headline Coachella one year. It should be. That's a great name. Now, you actually, you got your PhD in zoology in Hawaii working with hammerhead sharks. Did you pick them because they are the weirdest things on the planet?

Well, sort of. But also, they're kind of like a high performance athlete. Okay. I mean, they really are. As sharks go, they're highly tuned. They can turn on a dime. You know, they've got this big canard wing in the front that generates lift. So, just in case you ever black out and come to on the glossy stage of a game show and need to know what the broad head flap on a hammerhead shark is, I got you covered. It's a spherinid cephalofoil from the Greek for hammer and head wing. And not to hammer too many facts into your head, but it may act like a canard wing. Canard wing? Canard. Hmm. Which is a little forewing

on a fighter jet that comes in front of the main wings to help it float and get lift. So, now you know that information. Incredibly powerful. But they're shark, like some of the groups, that can never stop swimming. If they stop swimming, they suffocate. Oh my God. So, from the time they're born to the time they die, they're constantly swimming in order to breathe. So, I was really interested in, well, what does that cost? What does that cost a shark? God, that sounds like workaholism. Never stop. Never stop. Never stop. So, I figured, okay, how am I going to measure this? So, I thought, well, what I'll do is I'll

build a big water treadmill for these sharks and then I'll put them in this water treadmill and then I'll make them swim at different speeds and I'll measure how much oxygen they take out of the water. So, if we know how much oxygen an animal consumes, you know how many calories they're burning. Now, they need to make a fit fit for them. So, I built my own acoustic transmitter that measured every single tailbeat. So, every time their tails wag back and forth, it would produce a ping, underwater ping, and then I'd follow the sharks around for 48 hours and count how many times their tails were beating per minute. By doing that, I could calculate how many calories they burned per day. Oh my God, and? So, basically, what I found out was these baby

hammerheads were burning so many calories that they only had about a three-week period to learn how to feed proficiently on their own where they would starve to death. Now, what is that about some sharks where they have to stay moving all the time? Is that so that water continues to pass their gills? Like, that seems like it would be an evolutionary disadvantage, like, to the max. Why is that still in place? So, I think a lot of that has to do with, historically, many places the ocean, there's a lot of oxygen in the ocean and it's only recently that we're starting to see that change. So, to keep water passing over their gills, sharks have to swim around with their mouths open, although some species just chill out and gulp in water. Now, in more oxygen-rich regions of the

ocean, sharks can take more pit stops. They can kind of boogie around a little less. Their metabolic rates are much lower than that of us, animals that constantly pay a price to keep our body warm, so their costs are lower, and that means that even though they're constantly moving, their costs are still substantially lower than ours. Does that mean that they're not sleeping or that they're moving while sleeping? Well, that's the big question. So, there's good evidence that some of these sharks actually do kind of go quiescent, even though they're moving. So, you think of those people that are restless sleepers. Even while they're sleeping, they're rolling all over one of those people. So, I could probably get more exercise sleeping than I do during the day sometimes, but

it's not animals aren't moving, they are moving. It's just that they have to do that to breathe. But what we think is their brains are kind of slowing down, and everything is slowing down. And we recently did a really cool experiment with these baby white sharks that we're studying, and we built a custom Fitbit for them that clamps on their dorsal fin. And that Fitbit measures every tailbeat they make and also measures every motion they make. What we found was really cool. So, two of the sharks that we tracked were doing these 30-foot circles, and they were swimming in a bank. So, they'd bank, swim a 30-foot circle, and that circle was almost a perfect circle. Oh, crazy. And they would do that for 20 minutes, and then all of a sudden,

they would stop and reverse and go back the other way. And they'd do that for 20 minutes, and they'd stop and reverse and go back the other way. And they would do that for four hours. Oh, my God. So, we're scratching our heads going, what in the hell is that? So, my students started looking through the literature, and it turns out that migratory birds that fly will actually turn off half their brain. And when they do that, they'll fly in a circle in one direction, and then they'll turn off the other half of their brain and fly and circle in the opposite direction. Oh, my word. So, physiologists believe that that's the way that these migratory birds, which are warm-bodied,

right? So, they're spending a lot of energy keeping their bodies warm, are basically resting their brain, and they kind of go on autopilot like that. Are sharks doing the same thing then? Could be. Could be. And now, when you say white sharks, is that a new term for great white sharks or are white sharks little great white sharks? Really good question. We've gotten rid of the great part. So, the common, common name now is white shark, aka the great white.

Because great white has such a cache for like, watch out, it's a killer, right? You know, it's giving them such a big head. There's such dicks now. You're right. We're trying to bring them back to reality. There's such a prima donna. We're just, they're just going to be white sharks now. Such complicated coffee orders. And so, we just call them white sharks now.

Yeah. Okay. That's good to know. I wasn't sure if they were just like little ones. And then, is there, what is the biggest flim flam that you would like to debunk about sharks? If you could bust a myth, what would it be? Well, so there's, there's actually a lot. Probably the biggest one is, if you're in the water, you see a shark. It's going to attack you. That just simply is bullshit.

It's just not true. I mean, we have millions of people in the water, in Southern California, year round, in and among sharks every single day, and nothing happens. Now, they may not see the shark, but those sharks are there. So this myth that if you're in the water, the shark's going to bite you. The other one is, if you're in the water and you're bleeding, great example, and I get this every spring, if a woman is menstruating, is it safe for her to swim in the ocean? Yes. I got this question from patron and Mars expert, Jennifer Boos, who was a guest on a

previous episode. She said, can a shark smell my period in the water or what? Probably, if it's very close, but the reality is there are little kids out there on the beach that are all skinned up, right? They're bleeding. So every little kid that goes to the beach that skins his knee or her knee on something is bleeding in the water. It's not like sharks are picking them off every day. It's just not true. So people have this vision that a drop of blood sends sharks into this craze. It's just not true. Okay. And the other examples I use is, man, I can't tell you how many hours I've spent putting hundreds of pounds of ground up fish and blood in the water to try to attract sharks and get absolutely nothing.

Right. You must be the real chum master out there. How much of your work involves hauling buckets of chum? Well, I used to do it a lot. I try to do it less now. So mainly because we're putting a lot of nutrients in the ocean that we don't need to use. They're better ways to attract sharks. But the bottom line is, here's the situation where we're trying to attract them, using the same things, and we can't. So this whole fallacy, oh my God, if I'm bleeding in the water, sharks are going to form a frenzy, it's just not true. Now, where were you? Do you remember the moment you heard about Sharknado? Do you remember the actual moment and what your reaction was? Actually, I got, after the first one came out, I never saw any of them. After the first one came

out, I got a call from a reporter who actually asked me, could that really happen? I mean, the answer is yes. It happens all the time, very frequent. I mean, I was shocked and I was trying to determine where they're serious. I think they were. I really, I think they were. And I was like, well, you know, there are cases during hurricanes and things like that that sharks do in inland. They actually get carried in by storm surge and things like that. But I don't think I've ever heard of a swirling tornado of sharks swirling around off the ocean from a waterspout. That just doesn't happen. So I think those are the sorts of crazy things that every once in a while happen and you shake your head like, what? Like even though the world can seem like a dystopian

simulation right now, like politically, like shark NATO is not going to happen. No, no, it's not going to happen as crazy as it may be. But the bottom line is actually, I think some of those movies are, they're fun. I get it. They're fun. They're kind of a cool twist. And they're so unrealistic that it actually helps. It helps get people over the fear of sharks because they think that's just utterly ridiculous. So in a way, the campy ones like that actually help sharks, I think. Do you have a favorite shark movie? Because I'm sure you have several unfavorite shark movies. Oh my God. People give me DVDs all the time. I have a stack up there. I try to give them away. You're like, get this out of my face. Well, actually, Jaws is one of my

favorites. Is it really? It really is. Well, for me, I was there. I grew up on Martha's Vineyard. So I was there when they were filming it. Oh my God. What? And half my kids I went to school with in the movie. Oh my God. Holy shit. That's crazy. So for me, watching Jaws is like a family reunion. So do you think that influenced at all your work with sharks or how do you grapple with the fact that like that that movie is part of your childhood and it's part of so many people's fear of sharks? How do you merge the two? Well, you know, that maybe being there and seeing how it was made, you know, so watching the sausage being made, you know, gives you a different impression of what you're eating, right? So the idea there is, you know, we saw all the things,

you know, a lot of my friends, school friends were in the movie. They were either extras or things like that. And, you know, they saw the mechanical shark and, you know, sometimes it didn't work. And, you know, so when you see all those things, then you realize it's just a movie, right? So I think being there when that was happening made it easier. But of course, when you watch the movie, this is the brilliance of Steven Spielberg, right? You know, none of the things he wanted to actually shoot like that real underwater footage they had a hard time getting. And then the mechanical shark really worked. So he made that movie where you actually only see the shark in only minutes of the movie. Oh, really? I didn't realize that. Watch it again. See how

many times you actually see a shark, whether it be a mechanical one or a real one. So it's your brain that's doing that. Your brain is building the monster. And that was the brilliant part. That in the soundtrack is just amazing, right? I mean, John Williams is amazing. So it creates that whole scene in your head. This feels kind of like a shark-based stop hitting yourself kind of a situation. Do you know what I mean? Like the movie's doing it, but also we're doing it to ourselves. It's more weird doing it. Okay. And now, have you ever said, be honest with me, in the field, we're going to need a bigger boat? Yes. Has that happened? Yes, it has. It's happened a couple of times,

not because of the size of the sharks, but usually because the ocean that we're in. So last summer, my students were out tracking those baby hammerheads or baby white sharks that I was telling you about. We're doing this out of a small 17-foot Boston whaler. Well, the third shark we did at one o'clock in the afternoon, my students called me up and they go, so I go, okay, I told my other students, take out a bigger boat and we'll switch boats. So they switch out boats and then I get another phone call at one o'clock in the morning. And they're like, we're now off Newport Beach. That's like 22 miles away. And they go, they're going, man. When they know, when they're ready to leave a spot,

it seems like they know exactly where to go and they make a beeline. They're just like, we out. Yep. So, you know, I'm done with, with Long Beach, I'm going to Dana Point and I'm going to hang out there for a month. Reminds me of people I used to know, like in club days, it would like go to a club, 10, 30, they'd arrive, 11, 15, they're at the next club. You're like, where are we going next? That's exactly, this place is dead. Have you been in an underwater shark cage? Yes. Yeah, you've been in those, right? My thought on them is like, they look scary, but also I'm like, they look like they're not going to, they seem like they would be

safer than other things because they're not going to bite through the bars, right? Yes, exactly. Is it fun? Is it crazy? It's kind of cool. I mean, you do, you do feel somewhat restricted, right? You know, because you, you, you can't move as well. And as a diver, I'm used to being in the open water, I feel more comfortable, you know, being able to move a little bit more freely. The other thing that is always a little uncomfortable is when the cage is hanging in the water and you're hanging by a rope, right? Or a table or something like that. You go, okay, wait a minute. I'm in a box over 200 feet of water. You know, it sounds like a plot to a movie, right? Yeah. And you're going, how quickly can I get

out of here if I have to? But the biggest problem that has occurred with some of the cages is that the photographers want big windows. They have big cameras and they want to get those big cameras out those windows. So you don't get a beautiful shot of this awesome sharks when you buy with bars in it. So they make the windows bigger. But what happens is the smaller sharks can swim through the windows and occasionally when they get in the cage with you, they don't like that. Yeah, I bet not. And they start bouncing off the walls and you're in the cage with a shark and the shark's not happy about being in the cage and you're trying to get out of the cage. Yeah, those aren't, those aren't good scenarios. Yeah, that sounds like having a bee in your car.

It's kind of like that. So for me, I prefer not to use cages. And in good clear water, when you can see the sharks coming and the sharks know you can see them coming, you feel a lot more comfortable. Have you ever gotten a little love nibble from a shark? The little ones, because they don't like being held, right? A lot of animals that don't like being held. So those are the ones that are, there's some forgiveness there, right? This little teeth, little wounds. I've been bumped a couple of times. I've been come close to getting bit, but there's one rule in my lab, one rule, really important rule, do not get bitten. That's the number one rule. I always tell my students, if there's one thing you leave the

lab with, rule number one, I'm not taking anybody to the emergency room. Oh my god. How do you, and so they know their precautions? Yes. We spend a lot of time training. We really do. We spend a lot of time on how to properly hold sharks. And it's not just for our safety, it's for theirs. Because we want to make sure these animals are well taken care of. But the other part is, you know, when you're in the water, what do you do when you see the sharks? And can we begin to interpret their behavior? And generally what you find in most water people know this already, you know, it's like having dogs. So people that have dogs or around dogs all the time, you can tell when a dog's upset. You can tell when a dog's afraid, you can tell when a dog's

angry. And you know what to do in response to those recognitions. Sharks are no different. They really aren't. So once you start to interpret body language, you can start to go, okay, that shark is not in a good state. I'm just going to back up. Also, I asked later, happened to be off mic, if sharks have individual personalities. And Chris stopped and looked at me like I had asked the same question about his children. And rightfully so, he was like, oh, you dear woman, yes, of course they do. So my job in life is now to wear spiked shoes and to climb the nearest tallest tree and scream to as many people in your shot that each shark has a unique personality. They're like dogs or people on the real world. Maybe some of them

are really sweet and would help you move. And then others would like not even RSVP for your birthday party. Or, you know, it's coming really close. It's just checking me out. If I give it a good swat in the nose, you know, that'll be good enough. So these are the sorts of things that we're learning. We're trying to interpret their body language so that we can better give that information to the public so that if you see a shark, you can do the same thing like you would if you're walking down the street and you encounter a dog. So it's back up, maybe, maybe a nose boop, maybe trust your intuition and don't be a bucket of chum. Pretty much. That's pretty much it. Okay. Yeah. So and then, you know,

being aware of your situations. So, you know, I hear really funny stories from surfers who they're like, I love going out in the surf and communing with nature. It's great. You know, there are times I'm out there and there's this huge school of fish around me and they're underneath my board. I'm in the middle of it. I'm thinking that's great. I'm like, yeah, that's probably not the best place to be, you know, because you're in the middle of a bait ball. And what do sharks do? They charge through those bait balls and you don't want to have your foot mistaken as a piece of bait. Oh, I've never heard of the term bait ball, but it's now my favorite ever. Yep. So the other one is they're out there and it's beautiful evening and a baby sealer sea line climbs on their board

and they're thinking, oh, what a touching moment. It's wanting to bond with me. Actually, it's trying to hide from what's in the water. That's trying to get it. Oh man, I just went so deep down a rabbit hole watching clips of seals on surfboards and they also flop into fishing boats to take refuge from orcas like scared little aqua dogs. And if you're grumpy or in a bad mood, just consider our species so lucky that the thing that kills us the most, especially as a nation, is like eating too many appetizer platters at TGI Fridays. Other animals are constantly watching their backs because they might get eaten. And we likely have more ability than we're aware of to sense that, but we just probably chalk those perceptions up to spidey sense or whatever because we're just

not used to using them. Now, it's time to use your questions and get into the rapid fire round. But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors, why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where Allergies gives our money, you can go to alleyword.com and look for the tab, Allergies Gives Back. There's like 150 different charities that we've given to already with more every single week. So if you need a place to go donate a little bit of money, but you're not sure where to go, those are all picked by ologists who work in those fields. And this ad break allows us to give a ton of money to them.

So thanks for listening and thanks sponsors. Okay. Your questions. There were so many good ones. I jammed in as many as I could, but let's start with Tofer, who asked this innocent kind of breezy casual question that I love. Is it true that sharks eat each other in the womb? Okay. So the answer is yes. Okay. Yep. So it's called a Delphophagy and it's common in sand tiger sharks. So they're kind of like, they should have been called the Highlander shark because there can only be one, one per uterine. Really?

Yeah. So they eat all their lower, lower, slower growing siblings. Okay. Man, that's the one way to have the survival of the fittest. Start them off young. They're all only children. They're like, really? Me too. That's so weird. I'm an only child. That's so weird. We're all only children. Jamie Drew wants to know, my nine-year-old Chelsea would like to know if sharks fart. Thanks. Oh, good question. A lot of other fishes do, but that's, there are other reasons for that. They probably do because they probably build up a little methane gas in there. So for more on this topic, you may want to add to your library the reference book, Does It Fart? The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence,

written by a zoologist alongside a salamander expert and fun side note, Dr. David Steen of the Herpetology episode, is thanked in the forward of this book for helping inspire it. Once again, it's called Does It Fart? But by and large, sharks digestive systems are amazing. Are they so efficient? They're unbelievably efficient and considering what they eat. So first of all, sharks are unique in that they can avert their stomach. So like when we get sick, we have to have what's called reverse peristalsis. Suddenly, muscles that normally go in one direction from your mouth to your stomach go, that's not good in our stomach, and they start moving in the other direction.

That's why you vomit. Sharks actually don't do that. They actually turn their stomach inside out. So they avert it out their mouth, they can rinse it out, and then pull it back in. God, that's so handy. It really is. On their 21st birthday, I mean, they do live to be 400 and whatever, but I don't know what the equivalent is of legal drinking age, but that would be handy. But when you're eating whole fish with spines and scales and things that are really hard to digest, why pass those through your sensitive inner bits? Why not just get rid of them, flush them out? It's just like shaking crumbs and bobby pins out of your purse.

And then once that meal passes and it starts going through their intestine, their intestines, this great space-saving device that's a spiral staircase, where food kind of winds its way through a kind of looks like a football with a spiral staircase. And it's very efficient at pulling out all the good nutrients. But some sharks actually have a different kind of what's called a scrolling valve. So basically, they can actually rinse out their intestine out their anus. What? Yeah. Yeah. Now, this is something you typically want to do in private.

Never really shake out your rectum in private, you'll see. The way we know this works is in a query, a public aquaria, where they have some of these sharks, they will have their sharks out during the day and at night and they look great. And the next morning they come in and the shark's dead on the bottom of the tank. So the researchers of the aquarius will take them out and they'll do a necropsy. And what they'll find is that their intestine, the lower part of their intestine, has perforations and they internally hemorrhage. And nobody could figure out how this was happening.

What turns out at Waikiki Aquarium, one of the grad students who was in charge of sweeping up the foyer at night, saw this happen, saw this black-tip reef shark swing around, flushed this thing out its butt and a jack came over and bit it. Oh my God. Rude. Rude. So the great thing is they have the ability to completely flush their body, their digester track out, to get rid of all sorts of debris and parasites and all sorts of things. The bad thing is you don't want to do that in the presence of other predators. Oh my God. This is like triple lock on the bathroom here.

Exactly. Oh my God. That's so tragic. But who knew that whoever was sweeping the lobby was like, you just figured out a whole new thing about the bowels of a shark. Exactly. Oh, that's amazing. Both Hale Science and Justin So, want to know, essentially, how aggressive are sharks really? Not. Well, they're not any more aggressive than I would say most of the other animals that we're familiar with. Like all animals, they will protect themselves.

Everybody has a personal space. And when something starts getting in your personal space, you will have a breaking point where you will protect yourself, push somebody else away, thwart somebody, do whatever you have to do to protect that personal space. And we know sharks have that and they have a body language that they warn other animals that you're in my space. And my predecessor, Don Nelson, did some really cool research on that. Do they flick their tails like sassy? No, they arch their back, they drop their petrofins. You know, like when you chase a cat down an alley and you corner them and they

arch their back and their fur stands up and they bear their teeth. That process is known as an agonistic display. Oh, it's like mad dogging someone. It's mad dogging. It's like back off, Jack. So we know that sharks exhibit that behavior and that behavior is an agonistic display because my predecessor would chase them around an underwater sub to piss them off. And then he would get them to the point where they would break out of it and they would attack the sub and take off.

Oh, my God. So he could actually induce that behavior and then get them to, you know, basically do what a cat would do. And then, of course, when animals feed, that's not aggressive. That's just feeding. Right. Gotta eat. Gotta eat. You gotta eat. You're a shark. Sarah Nishaw wants to know, I've seen a few videos recently of sharks enjoying scratches. Do sharks have a type of pleasure center in their brains?

Do they like little scritchy scratches? So they do have a lot of itchies. I'll give them that. So there are a lot of ectoparasites that get on sharks and they have little claws and they move around the body and they probably itch. So quite often it's not uncommon to see sharks rub on the seafloor or they'll rub on coral reefs or they'll rub on rocks trying to rub these things off. In fact, one of the reasons why we think some sharks jump is to try to dislodge those things. They're like literally get off my back. Exactly.

Neil Williams wants to know what's with the fish that tags along with sharks like an annoying little brother. So the ones that like, I mean, are those lampreys? What are they? So those are remora. So there's remora and shark suckers and basically they're hitchhikers but they're hitchhikers with a purpose. So their goal is to not only catch a ride, so sharks are like uber basically for them, but also uber eats, right? So as the sharks feeding, it's releasing little bits and pieces that they can actually snack on. This sounds like the fish version of being a stowaway on a gelato truck and I am into it. You know, they're kind of getting a ride and a meal at the same time.

Oh, that's so cute. Not to mention, now you're with big brother and big brother, nothing's going to come try to eat you because you're attached to a big shark. But they might be like, get off. Yeah, they'll do that. They'll do that and all the remoras do is switch to the other side. What a professional pester. Aki wants to know, do sharks communicate with each other? And if so, what do they talk about? Well, probably the same things we do. Like, hey, how's your day going? Have you seen any

seals lately? Do I have a remora on my butt right now? Just more of the week my butt looked big. Stuff like that, yeah. So, you know, that's the part that I think is really interesting. That's the part we're trying to figure out. A lot of fish use chemicals as a means of communication. They use pheromones to communicate with individuals of the opposite sex to say, hey, baby, are you looking for a mate? Or, you know, maybe I just saw something really scary and there's a predator around here and those chemicals alarm them. So they're meant to scare other sharks. So we don't fully understand

how that system works in addition to the body language parts. And some of the body language may be very subtle. Big ones tend to show the little ones, you're in my space. So they'll do things like jaw gaping. They'll flap their gums, basically. Oh my God. And that has meant you're pissing me off. You better back off. Damn. So they do to communicate. They do. They do. Our job right now is to try to figure out what those messages mean. And when you say if there's a predator around for sharks, what would be a predator to

sharks? What eats sharks? Because aren't they an apex predator? Sure. Well, sharks eat other sharks. So they'll eat other sharks, no problem. But probably the king of the hill, the king of the ocean, is really Orca. I mean, they're the true badasses of the ocean because they're the only thing that's known to take down adult white sharks. Oh, I didn't know that. You know what? Now that you say it, they're kind of like an SUV cop car. They really are. They are true badasses. And what makes them the true badasses is that they're warm bodied, they're fast swimmers, super smart, and they're very social. So they work as a team.

Oh, so they can surround one white shark. They're basically like a gang, the worst gang of wolves you could imagine. But it's so funny because no one's afraid of Orcas like they are sharks. Hmm. I wonder who did the PR for those whales? Damn. Sea world. Here we go. Okay. A couple more questions then. I know you got to go. Here's Karl wants to know, and Alicia Pruitt wants to know, how do their teeth grow so quickly and what determines how many rows of teeth a shark has? Okay. So some of that's genetic. So the number of teeth they have per row is genetic. In fact, we can use that as a way of identifying certain species. The tooth shape actually changes,

which is really cool. What? So if you're the type of person that hates going to a dentist, you should have been a shark. Absolutely. Because the cool thing is when they're small, their teeth will be a different shape because they're designed for eating different things. Usually the things they eat when they're small, but as they get bigger, their teeth morphology can change so they can eat different things. So the cool thing about that is their teeth change as they mature, which enables them to feed on different things. And they just keep growing. I just keep growing. So here you can see behind the gum would be another five or six rows of teeth that are developed. So the entire front

row is programmed to, it's like literally conveyor belt. The front row fall out about every 30 days. Oh my God. And a new row of teeth is constantly rotating in. And that's why we can sometimes people find shark teeth on the beach, like they're just disposable. Pretty much. Yeah. That's amazing. I have never seen a shark skull like this up close and to look and to see them all nested in there. It's crazy. It's almost like if you were to take a part of rosebud and it's just layer after layer of teeth. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay. Last two questions. What is the worst thing about your job? Is it scraping tanks? Is it scheduling press?

Like what's the shittiest thing about your job? What do you hate? Well, as a university professor, the worst thing about my job is grading. Oh my God. Oh my God. Do I hate grading? Oh, it's the worst. I love that. This is a person who has been suspended in a shark tank in the ocean. And the worst thing about your life is grading. I would clean a tank before I would grade. Oh man. I hate grading. So grading sucks the most? Grading sucks the most. I love being in the field. I love being out working with my students.

I love working with sharks. But I have paperwork that I have to do and somebody's going to do it and it always falls on me. So that's another really crappy job. Even dealing with the press, I don't mind doing that. Because I feel as though the more I do it, the more reporters I educate. We got to change the dynamic. We got to change the way people think about sharks. And to get a reporter to say that, that to me is a win. Right. It's a chance to get people to love sharks as much as you do. And I think it's working. I think we're slowly making progress. Now, what's the best thing about what you do?

Geez, there's so much. I know. I mean, I love working with students. I love talking to the public about sharks. People have so many interesting questions and observations. I love working with kids. Kids are like, they have no fear. None. They are just like, that is the coolest thing ever. I love technology. Oh, because you use a lot of it in your telemetry. I'm a total tech junkie. If I had to go back to school, I'd do it for engineering. Really? Oh, my God, I love it. But we need you in the shark world.

No, no, we need we need engineer, computer scientist, shark biologist. That's what we need. So calling all people who have interest in all those things, go do that. Come see me, please. So it's changing the way we look at sharks. Technology is literally revolutionizing our understanding of the ocean. So what held us back was the lack of tools. You can do so much more now than you could 20 years ago in terms of collecting data, right? Absolutely. And it's because the technology has got us to that point. And the great thing is it's getting like-minded engineers and like-minded computer scientists

to say, okay, hey, I can work with you. That's a really cool idea. I can build that for you. I can work with you to build that. And then when that technology comes along, we're suddenly buried in data. Biologists who aren't used to having that much data are suddenly going, oh, my God, what do I do with all this? And now we're working with data scientists to go, hey, I know how to help you with that. And what it's doing is it's showing people how we use the technology, how we're using it to understand sharks, how they can use that to use the beach safer. And then it's motivating the next generation of student who is interested in science or math or technology or sharks. Do you think that there is a world five,

10 years down the line where we look at sharks with the same warmth and reverence that we do, whales and cougars and other maybe predators who are really astounding biologically? I think a lot of people are getting there. And the tough part is, if you look at predators in general, land predators, ocean predators, we got rid of them all. 50 to 100 years, we eliminated those things because we perceived them as a potential threat. And what's happened since then is humans have now used the woods and the mountains and the ocean for all sorts of recreation. And we did so without those predators. And about 25 years ago, we recognized the importance of those predators. And we started putting in place protections for them. And now that they're

coming back, we don't know how to act around them. So there's a big need to teach people how to be predator savvy again. So I'll give you an example. Seals and sea lions, they've come back tremendously. I mean, since the Marine Maritime Protection Act in 1973, they went from being on the verge of extinction to being fully recovered. So now it's not uncommon to be at the beach and have a sea lion haul out. Now, in some cases, the poor animals are sick. I've seen people go place their toddler next to them to take a picture of that. Now, at what point did we think that that was a good idea? That animal laying on the beach looks so cute. It's actually an ocean wolf. It's got canines about three inches long. So these are the sorts of things we have to fix, like the family driving to Yellow

Stone and they see a bear eating out of a garbage bag on the side of the road. And they pull over their car and they roll down the window and they give their kid a cracker to feed to the bear. Oh, God. And they take a picture of that. When did we think that was okay? Oh, no. So these are the things that we got to work on. So don't be fearless, but be smart. Be predator smart, right? It's so cool to be able to see these animals, but we got to give them their space and we have to remember their job. They're a predator. So so that we don't become part of the food chain. As long as we're smart, we should be able to do that. We did it before in our ancient history. We can do it again. But of course, being predator savvy isn't the same

thing as being terrified of an extinct megalodon. And now watching Shark Week, just take it with a big, big fat grain of salt. Entertainment wise, enjoy the entertainment. Just be aware that the educational value may not quite be of the same caloric content. Sure. Thank you so much for debunking so much fun, Flam. You are amazing in your field. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Yeah, this ruled. So remember, if you have a stupid question, ask a smart people because seriously, they love talking about it. And that's how they got smart. And just asking a question is as smart as it is. Now, to learn more about Dr. Low's work, you can Google Shark Lab Long Beach. It'll pop right up. He's also on Twitter and Facebook

at CSULB Shark Lab. That's Cal State University Long Beach Shark Lab. You can watch the telemetry trackers of white sharks, shovel headed guitar fish, sea turtles. It's kind of like find my friends. That's at scattn.org. And I'm going to throw a link in the show notes to all this stuff. Don't worry, please do not write this down if you're driving. Now, oligies is at patreon.com slash oligies. If you want to join the question club, I include as many as time allows. And we're also at oligies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Ali Ward with 1L on both. The oligies podcast Facebook group is popping off. Thank you, Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for adminning. You're both wonderful and I love you.

oligiesmerch.com has your body actually covered. And again, the code for the 10% off sale through July is camp, oligies. Thank you, Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for being such rock stars. Thank you, Stephen Ray Morris, who's been under the weather. And when I expressed, I was afraid that editing this on a tight turnaround would kill him. He texted me, you're not going to kill me with a lot of ease like me. And I hope he's okay, Stephen, please sleep. The music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. And you know, each episode, I tell you a secret at the end. Usually it's one of my secrets,

usually slightly shameful, but I'm going to tell you a cool, happy secret that's not mine. Okay, so if you watched the Super Bowl performance a few years ago with Katy Perry dancing to upholstered seven foot tall sharks, one on either side of her, the left shark fucked up, could not dance and became this mascot for doing your best and just not nailing it. For years, the person inside the left shark costume would not speak publicly. And finally, he did earlier this year. His name is Brian Gao. He was a dancer with Katy Perry for five years. Now he's a hairstylist in West Hollywood. And he said he knew what he was doing. He was like, I'm a good dancer, but I just figured, you know what, I'm going to mess this one up.

It'll be more interesting. So we got up there, screwed up the choreography, he looked like an idiot. Everyone was like, yes, left shark, you're giving me life. It is okay to be myself in this episode about accepting sharks. I think the left shark will usher us into a new era of sharks are people too. They are individuals, they are imperfect. And that is what makes them lovable. We are each our own little shark with our own little personalities. Okay, that's my secret. Bye bye. Bowl history left shark. He stole the half time show.