Think of all the animals more likely to attack you than a shark. You might find a brown recluse spider waiting in your slippers. Your beloved corgi might get sick of baby talk and snap off your lower lip. A 350-pound white-tailed stag could wander out into the highway on your drive home from work, and if you don’t end up with an antler through the forehead in the ensuing wreck you could pick up Lyme disease from a tick shed from the beast’s flank.
So why do sharks get the most buzz? Why are sharks at the heart of the Discovery Channel’s annual celebration of spurious science and sensationalistic reporting when spiders and dogs are much more interesting biologically and behaviorally? Why are sharks, a predator most people never encounter, the default cultural signifier of evil, predation and carnage?
I have two theories about sharks: one about why we see them as being so irredeemably evil; the other about why we’re so fascinated.
The first comes from a recent viewing of Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws. If the film were released today it’d be considered a parable for gun control or tobacco or terrorism – pick your headline. Much of the drama in the film hinges on the Amity town council ignoring the danger in their midst less they disrupt the flow of Fourth of July tourism dollars, instead relying on half-measures as the bodies (or chunks of bodies) pile up.
Sharks stand as a paragon of evil because they’re the only animals that specifically ruin vacations. All year long we work towards that one weekend when we get to leave our responsibilities behind and dip our toes into the open ocean, let the crashing waves drown out the beep of an incoming text as the undertow tugs us out towards the horizon. Then we get to the beach and it’s closed because some prehistoric beast gnashed off the toes of some poor sucker and suddenly this fantasy vacation is less about unclenching and more about hoping the deposit on the rental house is refundable.
My second theory stems from an argument I had with my friend Anna years ago, over what the coolest animal was. I offered otters and gorillas; she countered both times with sharks. She refused to budge, said sharks were the coolest animal by such an enormous margin that it was barely worth discussing an alternative. “Sure,” I said, “sharks are scary and tough, but otters use their tummies as a plate when they eat, and gorillas can learn sign language. What makes sharks cooler than that?”
“Sharks can’t stop moving forward or they’ll die,” she said. “They don’t stop moving and they never look back.”
Thinking back, I realize that I should have been a bit less surprised by the various turns that relationship took, and that sharks are the spirit animal of the 21st century. They’re 400-million-year-old millennials, so single-minded in their forward momentum and quest to consume everything in sight that they might as well have the Apple logo on their dorsal fins.
Maybe this is all one theory, actually. Maybe we regard sharks with fascination and horror because they’ve been around forever and more than any other creature seem to feel so little of either for us. They don’t attack because they’re scared or protecting their territory, they attack because we’re around – and when we’re not around any more, assuming there are still some sharks left, they won’t even notice we’re gone.
