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Can I Survive a Shark Attack by Gouging Out Its Eyes? · 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 carbine easier. Hello, Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and staff writer here
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  Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot Com. With me is fellow
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  Speaker 1: staff writer Charles Chuck Bryant. We call him Chuck. We
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  Speaker 1: know him and love him as Chuck. We think pretty
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  Speaker 1: highly Chuck. How you doing, Chuck? Good? Um good, ul
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  Speaker 1: Hold on, I know what you're doing. I know what
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  Speaker 1: you're doing. What is that from? Is it from? Is
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  Speaker 1: it from Tremors? No, it's not from the awesome Fred
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  Speaker 1: Ward movie Tremors? Is it another fred Board movie? Maybe
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  Speaker 1: Uncommon Valor? No Remo williams now, huh, I'm just stumped.
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  Speaker 1: What is it? It's from Jaws. That's right, that's right, yes,
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  Speaker 1: and you know what I have seen Jaws. It means
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  Speaker 1: that we're talking about sharks. You want to talk about sharks? Yea,
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  Speaker 1: let's talking about sharks and more specifically, what you can
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  Speaker 1: do if you get attacked by a shark. What can
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  Speaker 1: you do? I mean, I imagine like just lay there
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  Speaker 1: and you know, bleed to death. That's what I always
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  Speaker 1: planned on doing. That's one I know you you have
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  Speaker 1: you professed to have a black belt and running away,
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  Speaker 1: but swimming away is not quite the same thing, my friend.
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  Speaker 1: I think the best advice you can give is to
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  Speaker 1: to try and hit the shark in the nose, grab
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  Speaker 1: the shark by the gills, or polkas shark in the eyes.
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  Speaker 1: I'll curly from the three stooges. Yeah, except I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if you can get your fingers across both sides actually,
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  Speaker 1: which is cheating. It is cheating. But all of those
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  Speaker 1: three things could have an effect on on making the
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  Speaker 1: shark leave for a couple of reasons. I know you
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  Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about the receptors and
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  Speaker 1: the shark's nose. How do you know that we're in
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  Speaker 1: sync that way? Okay, we're sympatico right, all right, So
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  Speaker 1: there's this thing in the sharks nose. It's basically in
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  Speaker 1: the shark's nose um the area of it called the
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  Speaker 1: ampuleae of Lorenzi, right, which you can order with a
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  Speaker 1: side of sconge ly exactly, and you're all set and
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  Speaker 1: fat and happy and you should probably wear the napkin
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  Speaker 1: in your shirt during that meal. Right. So, Um, basically,
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  Speaker 1: what what this is is, it's a series of these
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  Speaker 1: little pores than they're jelly filled, and they have little
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  Speaker 1: hairs in them, and it's a sharks electrical receptors. Sharks
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  Speaker 1: pick up very very faint um electrical impulses put out
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  Speaker 1: by like living things. Um. They movement creates electricity, that
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  Speaker 1: kind of thing, and the shark can it's one of
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  Speaker 1: the sharks senses. It's a sense that we lack that
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  Speaker 1: a shark has, right, and that's probably a reason why
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  Speaker 1: they've been around for hundreds of millions of years and
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  Speaker 1: we haven't precisely, Yeah, and uh, they haven't changed that much,
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  Speaker 1: have they now? They haven't. They used to be a
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  Speaker 1: lot bigger. The the megala what was it called, I
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  Speaker 1: think of megalo don. He was like a great white
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  Speaker 1: but three times a size, like sixty ft long. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: that's unsettling. Yeah, yeah, so but apparently, and I'm not
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  Speaker 1: sure if this would have been the same case with
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  Speaker 1: the megalodon. But you if you punch a shark in
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  Speaker 1: these pores, the Amfula Lorenzi, Um, it will it be
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  Speaker 1: tantam out to basically punching you in your soul? Right,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, if you could, if you could detect maybe
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  Speaker 1: punching you in your um, your your fillings, your mental fillings,
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  Speaker 1: in your teeth while you were, you know, chewing aluminum foil,
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  Speaker 1: I imagine would be something like that that will get
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  Speaker 1: a shark's attention, will basically say back off, pal, right.
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  Speaker 1: And there's a good chance that if you get ahold
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  Speaker 1: of gills or you punch them in the nose like that,
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  Speaker 1: if you're able to do this, that's the problem we
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  Speaker 1: talked about, if you're able to have the wherewithal while
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  Speaker 1: you're being attacked by a shark and taking in salt
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  Speaker 1: water and possibly having a foot ripped off, that you
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  Speaker 1: can bring it all together and say, let me go
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  Speaker 1: find that I or that gill, or even make a
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  Speaker 1: fist for that matter. Right. Um, it kind of makes
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  Speaker 1: me wonder if something that another part on another podcast
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  Speaker 1: we talked about, um, hysterical strength, if that comes into
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  Speaker 1: play where you're just totally focused and just raining blows
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  Speaker 1: upon some poor sharks thing, never come back, never come back.
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  Speaker 1: That kind of yeah, like Cluver Lang and Rocky three
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  Speaker 1: just go off on the shark's nose that much. Yeah. Um,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if that would happen. I wouldn't want
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  Speaker 1: to know. And there are some considerations to actually fighting
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  Speaker 1: a shark. We also want to say that our our
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  Speaker 1: esteemed colleague Kristin Conger wrote this article and she did.
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  Speaker 1: She she knows her stuff. She actually went in the
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  Speaker 1: shark fighter. Yeah, um, Kristen. Kristen points out that when
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  Speaker 1: you're going for shark's gills or its eyes, you're also
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  Speaker 1: simultaneously presenting your arm, going hey, shark, check it out,
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  Speaker 1: you want this, take it? And the flailing limb is
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  Speaker 1: kind of what they're attracted to in the first place
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  Speaker 1: and something they can easily grab hold of. But I
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  Speaker 1: know the MythBusters on the Discovery Channel tested this out
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  Speaker 1: by putting a sort of a rock'am sock 'em robot
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  Speaker 1: that they made in a outside of a shark's cage,
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  Speaker 1: and this thing, would you know, they attracted the shark
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  Speaker 1: and it would punch the sky in the nose, which
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  Speaker 1: was kind of punched the shark and it was kind
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  Speaker 1: of cool, but I also kind of felt bad for
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  Speaker 1: the shark because shark abuse. Yeah, they're just trying to
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  Speaker 1: eat you know, they don't mean anything. I know, I
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  Speaker 1: mean most most shark shark attacks are you know, mistaken identity,
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  Speaker 1: right stake in identity and sharks. Some sharks are threatened
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  Speaker 1: because of overfishing and by catch when they catch sharks
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  Speaker 1: when they don't mean to. And uh, it's you know,
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  Speaker 1: we need to protect the sharks, not not go around
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  Speaker 1: punching them in the face. So, now that you know
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  Speaker 1: this is very similar to martial arts. You never start
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  Speaker 1: a fight with a shark, but if a shark starts
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  Speaker 1: a fight with you, you can finish it. You should
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  Speaker 1: probably brush up a little more and read Can I
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  Speaker 1: survive a shark attack by gouging out its eyes? On
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