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Are Dogs a Shark's Favorite Meal? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by
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Speaker 1: consumer Guy at Automotive We make garbine easier. Hi, and
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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, is staff writer
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Speaker 1: here at how Stuff Works dot Com. With me is
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Speaker 1: arguably at least my equal, if not better, fellow staff
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Speaker 1: writer Charles Bryant. How are you chucking? I'm good? You
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Speaker 1: got any dogs? I do? I have two very sweet
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Speaker 1: and bad dogs, Buckley. Yeah. I have three dogs, um, Abby,
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Speaker 1: Bow and Maybell, and they're all related in super cute.
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Speaker 1: And I love my dogs. Is I'm sure you love
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Speaker 1: your dogs sometimes? Well everyone, Every once in a while
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Speaker 1: I wake up from a deep sleep and I'm covered
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Speaker 1: in sweat and panicking just a little bit um at
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Speaker 1: the thought or dream of my dogs being eaten by sharks?
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Speaker 1: Has that ever happened to you? Know? That's really weird.
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Speaker 1: It is weird, but it's it's awful, a terrible way
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Speaker 1: to live. Well, you've told me there's a reason behind this. Yeah, actually, um,
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Speaker 1: And there was an article in two thousand five that
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Speaker 1: that came out in two thousand five in the British
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Speaker 1: tabloid The Sun. Um and uh. Basically it was a
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Speaker 1: photo of a dog with a huge fish hook through
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Speaker 1: its nose and apparently the dog had been used on
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Speaker 1: this small island in the Indian Ocean as shark bait.
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Speaker 1: So ever since I saw that, I'm thinking our dogs,
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Speaker 1: you know something that sharks like to eat? And true?
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Speaker 1: Is this? Is that? Like it bat boy or no?
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Speaker 1: It is true? I'm not sure if the photo is true.
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Speaker 1: Still a disturbing photo, but apparently it is true. Um
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Speaker 1: and frankly I went on Snops the double check and
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Speaker 1: stuff says it looks like it's true. That's horrific. But
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Speaker 1: ever since then I haven't been able to get that
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Speaker 1: image out of my head, or at least the image
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Speaker 1: of my dogs being eaten. Right, So, um, can you
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Speaker 1: help me put this to rest? Yeah, a little bit.
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Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons that you have this
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Speaker 1: fear is because is there's something called gaiya phobia, which
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Speaker 1: is irrational fear of being eaten by a shark yourself
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Speaker 1: and projecting or transferring onto my dogs. Probably so it
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Speaker 1: sounds like me, yeah, young might say that. But uh,
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Speaker 1: one of the reasons I think is because being attacked
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Speaker 1: by shark is probably one of the most terrifying things,
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Speaker 1: even though it doesn't happen often. You can't imagine, thanks
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Speaker 1: to Steven Spielberg, anything worse than being dragged under and
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Speaker 1: bitten by something, you know, three times you're side the
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Speaker 1: Jaws effect, the Jaws effect, which is very real. It
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Speaker 1: definitely is real. But like you said, I mean, there's
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Speaker 1: not a lot of shark attacks really. For as many
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Speaker 1: people are who are walking around, um, you know, very
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Speaker 1: concerned by being attacked by a shark, there's not that many.
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Speaker 1: There's like seventy one shark attacks across all species of
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Speaker 1: sharks in two thousand seven, and only one of those
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Speaker 1: related in in fatality. Right, right, And I've got a
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Speaker 1: couple of more stats for you, Josh, it might help
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Speaker 1: put this into perspective. Um, they're kind of silly, but
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Speaker 1: they're true. Between nine and two thousand and six, twelve
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Speaker 1: people in the United States were killed by sharks and
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Speaker 1: sixteen people guide from sand hole collapses. Wow, that's true. Boom, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and uh, in seven, there were thirteen injuries all across
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Speaker 1: the country from shark attacks, and there were more than
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Speaker 1: fifteen hundred injuries from humans biting other humans in New
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Speaker 1: York City alone. I know that was a terrible year
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Speaker 1: for human bites. It was a lot of people who
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Speaker 1: were bitten by someone else. Right, But you don't walk
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Speaker 1: around the streets of New York afraid that someone's gonna
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Speaker 1: bite you. Yet every time you're in the ocean, you're
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Speaker 1: probably afraid that the shark's gonna bite you. Definitely, sure, sure,
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Speaker 1: but but I mean, let's put this to rest, right,
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Speaker 1: I'm I'm not so much worried about myself. My concern
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Speaker 1: is really over my dogs. Even though you live nowhere
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Speaker 1: near an ocean precisely, we're pretty much landlocked here. Um.
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Speaker 1: But although you know, there are some sharks that can
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Speaker 1: swim upstream, right, yeah, bull sharks, And how far has
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Speaker 1: one ever made it? They they swimming and rivers to
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Speaker 1: get to other bodies of water, and they can survive
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Speaker 1: in fresh water. They've been spotted as far north as
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Speaker 1: Illinois of the Mississippi River, which is yeah, that's crazy,
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Speaker 1: that's really crazy. And actually the chatter who which is
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Speaker 1: pretty filthy, But I don't know, maybe a bull shark
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Speaker 1: would try it who knows. Maybe so uh, I actually
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Speaker 1: have to confess, I do know whether or not dogs
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Speaker 1: are a shark's favorite meal, and the answer is no,
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Speaker 1: although that's not to say that a shark won't eat
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Speaker 1: a dog if the you know, moment's right, the heat
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Speaker 1: of the moment, it's most likely, Yeah, who are you,
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Speaker 1: and I'm going to eat you to find out. Um,
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Speaker 1: there's a I think is it the bull shark of
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Speaker 1: the tiger shark that does the bump and bite. The
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Speaker 1: bullshark mainly does the bumping bite, which is just kind
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Speaker 1: of investigate and see what if something is edible or
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Speaker 1: you know, has enough blubber, which is they're really their
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Speaker 1: favorite thing to eat. But a bull shark too will
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Speaker 1: also eat like license plates and shoes, so will a
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Speaker 1: tiger shark. I think bull sharks have been known to
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Speaker 1: eat hippopotami under the right conditions, right, And tiger sharks
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Speaker 1: are the vacuum cleaners of the sea that call them
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Speaker 1: so that they'll lead anything. Now, a great a great
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Speaker 1: white actually tests out whether or not it's it's prey,
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Speaker 1: something is its prey by kind of biting down gently.
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Speaker 1: Because all sharks prefer blubber. Whales have been found that
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Speaker 1: we're relatively intact but advistrated but missing all their blubber.
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Speaker 1: And sharks love seals, And if you're attacked by a
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Speaker 1: great white and it's chomping down on you, it's um
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Speaker 1: basically just testing to see how much blubber you have.
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Speaker 1: Dogs don't have much blubber. But like you said, mistaken
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Speaker 1: identity can lead you a bad day for a dog,
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Speaker 1: and you can could happen. There's plenty more information where
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Speaker 1: this came from our dogs is shark's favorite meal, and
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Speaker 1: you can read it on how stuff works dot com
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