Are shark movies based on shark tales?
What are facts and what is fiction?
When you hear the Jaws theme song, your hands start sweating, you heartbeat is getting faster and your mind is racing. Your body is ready for the excitement of a horror movie depicting the great white shark as cold blooded killer stalking humans with an insatiable hunger. In Deep Blue Sea, scientists play gods with sharks’ DNA to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease ending up making them bigger, smarter and more ferocious than ever. Are these movies all based on facts about sharks or shark tales?
As soon as you think of Hollywood, you should know that fiction, sensationalism and special effects are part of the magic mix to get and retain people’s attention. After all, to them, time is money and if it results in a high attendance in movie theaters and of course in profits, it was time and money well spent, regardless of the facts.
Little did they know that such movies would be responsible for the bad reputation of sharks, particularly the great white shark, and for peoples’ fears such as Selachophobia. In fact, numerous species were hunted down and destroyed regardless of the declining numbers of these species, putting them on the endangered species list.
Which information was offered in these movies that are in reality based on shark tales rather than facts about sharks? Well, in Jaws, the famous great white shark was given the profile of cold blooded killer stalking human victims on a daily basis. Well, the only fact in this statement is that the great white shark is a cold blooded creature.
While, sharks can use various hunting strategies to get their prey, stalking is not one of them. And frankly, humans are too bony for their taste. Two of the hunting techniques being used when hunting for a prey such as a seal, the great white shark will either use breaching to surprise its prey and often will come up from underneath to avoid detection.
Another part of this statement that is based on shark tales rather than facts, is the idea of eating daily when in fact, great white sharks can go for days, weeks and even months without a meal.
In the movie “Deep Blue Sea”, scientists have been doing some research to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. It is quite odd when you think that the benefits of some shark body parts have been known to be linked to cancer and arthritis, not with Alzheimer’s disease.
Another one of the shark tales present in this movie is the fact that there are able to improve the size and intelligence of their brain when in fact the cavity in which their brain is simply not big enough to support a larger brain. Also, they made them as intelligent as dolphins when because of the size of their brain, their abilities are primitive and basically instinctive such as hunting, defensive behavior and automated functions such as their heartbeat.
As you can see, movies are essentially giving life to shark tales for entertainment purposes…and profit.
About the Author
My name is Sylvie Leochko. Shark movies such as Jaws and Deep Blue Sea have always fascinated me. What I originally believed to be based on facts, soon proved to be based on shark tales. If you wish to learn more about shark tales, I encourage you to visit the following site: http://sharks.findoutnow.org/shark-tales.html .
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