Sharks Have A Crap Life

Let’s have a show of hands: who here is afraid of sharks? Now, who is afraid FOR sharks? Uh huh, cool…OK, who here is wondering why I’m telling people I can’t see to raise their hands? Excellent question.

OH LOOK A SHARK.

WHAT. WHERE.

For those of you afraid of sharks, I understand. They’re big and scary and carnivorous and they’re real shitty at telling the difference between fat seals and skinny guys on surfboards. So a strong respect for the shear carnage they can wreak upon your person is good, healthy, even. But trust me, when it comes to human-shark relations, sharks deserve much more concern for THEIR well being than you do for yours. Hell, they deserve more concern in general.

Sharks have a crap time of it from day 1. I don’t mean from the minute of they’re out of mama, I mean the moment they’ve developed enough inside mama to wriggle around. Because if they have any siblings in there, the fight for survival has BEGUN. Sand tiger and mackerel shark pups have been known to eat one another WHILE STILL IN THE WOMB. How metal can you get? They’ll even eat unfertilized eggs until only the strongest pups remain (the uterus is divided or there would be only one). Cue sick guitar solo.

Although this just occurs in viviparous (live-bearing) and ovoviparous (eggs hatch in the uterus), oviparous sharks have it rough too. Their little egg cases are just left behind, abandoned in the sand or reef to hatch alone…

Cue sad violin.

However! At least when they hatch it’s not a race to escape mama. Shark parturition (birth) actually induces feelings of satiety in mama so that she’s not tempted to eat her pups. Not like they’ll stick around to test that.

If you want still more reasons to feel for the sharks, consider our interactions with them. In China, shark fin soup is a delicacy (despite the fin being mostly cartilage) and fisherman will catch sharks just to cut off the dorsal fin and leave the shark to die. Now, I am no vegetarian, but I believe that if you’re going to eat an animal, it’s life should not be so miserable that death is a mercy (see treatment of veal calves, if you can) and the method in which the animal is killed should be quick and relatively painless. Not to mention the rest of the shark is edible too. Not that we should be eating sharks anyway, because between our weird eating habits and shark-killing freakouts every time one wanders near a tourist site, there are many threatened and endangered shark species. Shark attacks are terrible, but more people are mauled by dogs and killed by cows each year than are attacked by sharks. That’s right, cows are the real Public Enemy Number One. Sharks are just more exciting and gruesome so they make the news. No one wants their family to be The Guy That Got Killed By a Cow Last Yeat; they hush that shit right up.

There are plenty of resources out there for avoiding shark encounters. Beach signs, defense tips, checklists shark threat level (Murky water? Fishing nearby? Maybe read on the sand today)…some beaches even have Twitter feeds for alerting beach-goers of shark sightings. It’s OK to be cautious, but when you’re feeling scared and wish they’d all just disappear, remember: sharks have a crap life.

So don’t hate a shark, hug a shark!

But like, one of the little ones, maybe a dogfish.

Cause let’s not tempt fate here, people.

Also those guys are pretty damn cute.

If you don’t think this is cute, then we’re not friends.

Sources

Frances, Peter and Angeles Gavira Guerrero. 2008. Ocean: The World’s Last Wilderness Revealed. 1^st American ed. New York. DK Publishing

Greven, H. 2000. “Viviparous Sharks.” Shark Info. Jan 3 2014 < http://www.sharkinfo.ch/SI1_00e/vivipary.html>

Photo Credit

Franco Banfi/Barcroft Media, Matthew Oxley and Doug Perrine.

Fluffcake Behavior

Now for something near and dear to my heart. No, not the cluster of nerves forming the natural pacemaker, I mean my dogs. These two fluffcakes are Wheaten Terriers, a non-shedding breed originally bred to hunt rats and mice (like other terriers). Mine are similarly fond of all things small and furry; Emer (the one is the grey sweater) could sit in the rodent aisle of Petco for HOURS. It’s Terrier TV and her favorite channel is always on. Anyway, getting to my main point, terriers also bred to be very good with people since effective ratting required them to live together. But the result was a breed that forms a strong pack with humans.
These packs are based on those found in wolves, the ancestors of dogs. At the top of the pack is the alpha male and female, the only members who breed (although care of pups is shared amongst the pack members). Alphas will stand over submissive pack members and grasp the sub’s throat with their teeth to display dominance. Establishing dominance can be more aggressive and violent if the alpha is either new or there are new, less submissive members entering the pack. Wolves hunt as a pack (with a couple staying behind to watch the kids) but feed according to rank, with the most dominant feeding first. Rest time also is stratified; everyone rests in a clump, but the alphas reside in the center with the more dominant wolves closest to them.
How does this translate in dogs? Let’s look at the fluffcakes. Good training, besides smoothing interactions with a pet, establishes hierarchy. Trouble dogs are often much less submissive than obedient ones. Makes sense, huh? Obedient dogs see their humans as the alpha members of the pack. When Emer was little, she’d often roll on her back when we would return home from something; she was acknowledging our dominance. She also used to pee, which is a hypersubmissive display that we discouraged for obvious reasons. Namely, the carpet. Many years later, we brought home Zeppo. Zeppo was the belligerent jerk of the litter, but Emer was knocking over the other puppies like bowling pins, so we got the one that liked knocking back. Even though Zeppo is now bigger and not so easy for twelve year-old Emer to pin to the couch, he’s not assertive enough to challenge the order.
In other breeds, trouble can arise if the dog is bred to have a very specific concept of pack. Dogs bred to fight and guard are like that; they consider their human family (traditionally a single aloof handler) the alpha(s) and everyone outside that is a stranger. When they dogs become pets, they need extra help to keep from reacting aggressively to outsiders. Some still have trouble with a human alpha; sled dogs take direction very well, but are NOT house pets. Their pack is focused within the sled team, they just learn to adjust to the hairless thing in thick clothes shouting at them before giving them treats.
Hope that helps you hairless things with furry family understand the pack dynamic. Cheers!

Source

Grandjean, Dominique. 2000. The Royal Canin Dog Encyclopedia. Royal Canin, Paris.