Stuff You Should Know - Can I Survive a Shark Attack by Gouging Out Its Eyes?

Episode Date: July 16, 2008

Although it can be intimidating, a shark is not invulnerable. Punching its nose, gouging its eyes, or grabbing its gills can stun the shark and give victims a chance to escape. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about shark attacks. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by Consumer Guide Automotive. We make our buying easier. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me is fellow staff writer Charles Chuck Bryant. We call him Chuck. We know him and love him as Chuck. We think pretty highly of Chuck. How you doing, Chuck? Hold on, hold on. I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing. What is that from? Is it from, is it from

Tremors? No, it's not from the awesome Fred Ward movie, Tremors. Is it another Fred Ward movie? Maybe on Common Valor? No. Remo Williams? No. I'm stumped. What is it? It's from Jaws. That's right. That's right, yes. And you know what that means. I have seen Jaws. It means that we're talking about sharks. You want to talk about sharks? Yeah, let's talk about sharks, and more specifically, what you can do if you get attacked by a shark. What can you do? I mean, I imagine, like, just lay there and, you know, bleed to death. That's what I always planned on doing. That's one. I know you've professed to have a black belt and running away, but swimming away is not quite the same thing, my friend. No. I think the best advice you can give is to try and hit the shark in the

nose, grab the shark by the gills, or poke a shark in the eyes. I'll curly from the three stooches. Yeah, except I don't know if you can get your fingers across. No, you have to come in from both sides, actually. Which is cheating. It is cheating. But all of those three things could have an effect on making the shark leave for a couple of reasons. I know you want to talk a little bit about the receptors in a shark's nose. How do you know that? We're in sync that way. Okay, we're simpatico, right? Yes. All right, so there's this thing in the shark's nose. It's basically in the shark's nose, the area of it, called the ampulea lorenzi. Right, which you can order with a side of scungilli. Exactly. And you're all set and fat and happy, and you should

probably wear the napkin in your shirt during that meal. So basically, what this is, is it's a series of these little pores, and they're jelly-filled, and they have little hairs in them, and it's a shark's electrical receptors. Sharks pick up very, very faint electrical impulses put out by living things. Movement creates electricity, that kind of thing. It's one of the shark's senses. It's a sense that we lack that a shark has, right? Right, and that's probably the reason why they've been around for hundreds of millions of years, and we haven't. Precisely, yeah. And they haven't changed that much, have they? No, they haven't. They used to be a lot bigger. The megalodon, what was it called? I think it was megalodon. That's it. He was like a great white,

but three times the size, like 60 feet long, perhaps. That's unsettling. Yeah, it is. Yeah, so, but apparently, and I'm not sure if this would have been the same case with the megalodon, but you, if you punch a shark in these pores, the ampullae of Lorenzi, it will, it'd be tantamount to basically punching you in your soul, right? I mean, if you could detect, maybe punching you in your fillings, your metal fillings in your teeth while you were chewing aluminum foil. I imagine it'd be something like that. That will get a shark's attention. I'll basically say, back off, pal. Right, and there's a good chance that if you get ahold of the gills or you punch them in the nose like that, if you're able to do this, that's the problem we talked about. If

you're able to have the wherewithal while you're being attacked by a shark and taking in saltwater and possibly having a foot ripped off, that you can bring it all together and say, let me go find that eye or that gill or even make a fist for that matter. Right. It kind of makes me wonder if something on another podcast we talked about, hysterical strength, if that comes into play, where you're just totally focused and just raining blows upon some poor shark thing, never come back, never come back, that kind of thing. Right. Yeah, like Clubber Lang and Rocky III, just go off on the shark's nose. That's possible. Pretty much, yeah. I don't know if that would happen. I wouldn't want to know. And there are some

considerations to actually fighting a shark. We also want to say that our esteemed colleague, Kristen Conger, wrote this article. She did. She knows her stuff. She actually went in the cage. She's the shark fighter, yeah. Right. Kristen points out that when you're going for a shark's gills or its eyes, you're also simultaneously presenting your arm going, hey shark, check it out. You want this? Can you take it? Right. And the flailing limb is kind of what they're attracted to in the first place and something they can easily grab hold of. Right. But I know the Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel tested this out by putting a sort of a Rockham Sockham robot that they made outside of a shark's cage. And this thing would, you know,

they attracted the shark and it would punch this guy in the nose, which was kind of cool. Punch the shark in the nose? Yeah. Punch the shark. And it was kind of cool, but it also kind of felt bad for the shark because shark abuse. Yeah. They're just trying to eat, you know, they don't mean anything. I know. I mean, most most shark attacks are, you know, mistaken identity, right? Mistaken identity and sharks. Some sharks are threatened because of overfishing and bycatch when they catch sharks when they don't mean to. And it's, you know, we need to protect the sharks, not not go around punching them in the face. So now that you know, this is very similar to martial arts. You never start a fight with a shark. But if a shark starts a fight with you,

you can finish it. You should probably brush up a little more and read Can I Survive a Shark Attack by gouging out its eyes on HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the

iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Ballinger. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.