Is there any truth to the lore that hitting a shark on the snout while it's biting you will trigger it to automatically drop you?
Yes. The sensitive areas on a shark are thought to be its snout, because it's got its nose there, it's got its electro-sensitivity capabilities there, and its eyes aren't too far away from that, either. Most sharks aren't used to their prey really striking back, so it spooks them, too.
A marine educator in Hawaii e-mailed me this question about shark eyes. What she says is that no one seems to know what color eyes the great white has. She's wondering if anyone's figured that out.
If you ask Quint from Jaws, he calls 'em [doing an impression of the Robert Shaw character's grizzled voice] "doll's eyes — lookin' at you with those doll's eyes." You gotta love that soliloquy. And he calls them doll's eyes because they look lifeless. And they look lifeless because there's no twinkle in them, and there's no coloration in them. You're basically looking through the [great white] shark's pupil into the darkness of the back of its eye.
Speaking ofJaws, how long has shark-attack hysteria been around?
Probably millennia. But yes, it strikes at some of our deepest fears . . . it's just the nature of the beast.
Related:
Into the heart of sharkness, Film: Universal Bites Jaws Into Vineyard, Mixed Magic’s Moby Dick goes to DC, More 
- Into the heart of sharkness
Unless you are a spectacularly moronic daredevil hell-bent on getting shark-shanked, New Englanders are more likely to be mowed down by a molasses tsunami or felled by Lizzie Borden's ax than they are to die in the maw of Jaws.
- Film: Universal Bites Jaws Into Vineyard
Gov. Sargent posed for the photos on a pier in Edgartown, preparing to let fly a bottle of vintage California champagne against the hill of the Orca, a pleasure craft transformed into a Nova Scotian Trawler to be used in Universal's production of Jaws.
- Mixed Magic’s Moby Dick goes to DC
In 2006, Pitts-Wiley wrote Moby Dick: Then and Now , a theatrical version of Herman Melville’s book, which joined the story of Captain Ahab chasing a great white whale to an urban tale of teenagers chasing “that Great White Thing” — cocaine.
- Review: The Cove
There's something at stake here, and it's not just the conscience of Ric O'Barry, who as the former dolphin trainer for the 1960s television show Flipper feels responsible for the planet's porpoise fetish.
- Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
It’s a light entertainment that can cash in with election-weary audiences.
- Photos: Grizzly Bear at Berklee
Grizzly Bear, live at Berklee Performance Center, June 3, 2009
- Maneaters: A history
Sometimes the most ferocious maneater looks like an ordinary rabbit… and sometimes it looks just like you covered in a flesh-gobbling pus!
- Pole sitter
Speaking to the legendary German filmmaker is like speaking to God.
- Middling earth
At times, the images in Alastair Fothergill & Mark Linfield's documentary adapted from the BBC nature series of the same name elicit that rare cinematic response: wonder.
- Review: Otto; or, Up With Dead People
"Wow, I just got a mental flash of thousands of zombies jumping over a shark."
- Monkeying around
Dire fiscal conditions at most media outlets have led major local players like the Providence Journal and WJAR/Channel 10 to pursue a unique employment strategy. Both organizations are apparently looking into securing the services of trained gibbons to provide much of the support work and eventually the writing and reporting of the news.
- Less
Topics:
Lifestyle Features
, Nature and the Environment, Wildlife, Marine Animals, More
, Nature and the Environment, Wildlife, Marine Animals, Lizzie Borden, Robert Shaw, Discovery Channel, Sharks, Greg Skomal, Greg Skomal, Jaws, Less
