Deep Throat

Great White Sharks. Big scary bastards. Damn near evolutionary perfection, top of the food chain, over a tonne of muscle and teeth. Speaking from an anthropological point of view: you wouldn't fuck with a Great White Shark. 

Fossils of Great White Sharks have been dated back 16 million years, these incredible beasts 'found themselves' some 9 - 11 million years before humans separated themselves out from chimps. Very little has changed since these fossils were alive and why would it? 

The appropriate phrase to describe a Great White is 'Apex Predator'. When I hear any animal falls into this category for real I know I'm going to enjoy learning about it. If you can imagine all the animals in a certain environment, in this case the sea, in a triangle sitting just above their food then the Great White would be right at the top. In some cases an animal can be an Apex Predator due to the absence of other animals. For example: If you were at London Aquarium looking at a tank with a large number of tropical fish and a seal or two, (unlikely I know but this is hypothetical) the seals are the Apex Predator. They are the Apex Predator because there is no bloody Great White Shark in the tank. Bang Jaws in there and the seals crap themselves, Apex Predators my arse! Get out seals! Great Whites are Apex Predators, make no mistake.

Something just touched my leg......

Great Whites get there name from their white underbellies, but have a grey dorsal area, this is a physical attribute known as 'countershading'. This is hugely beneficial to their hunting capabilities. The sharks generally hunt their prey from below. Having a grey dorsal area makes them tricky for their prey to spot from above and the lighter colours on underneath equally make it harder to spot from below, a very basic but ultimately very effective method of camouflage. 

Great Whites hunt by swimming along the sea bed looking for their prey above them. They're not particularly delicate eaters, engaging their full muscle ridden torpedo shaped bodies they will swim at full speed, up to 43mph, towards their target ramming them and taking the first chunk out of them to injure and incapacitate. After their prey has bled to death the shark will rip off chunks with their rows and rows of teeth and swallow them whole. No chewing. If a tooth gets broken, falls out, gets spinach stuck in it there will always be a tooth behind it to become the replacement, Great Whites can have up to 3000 at any one point, like a conveyor belt of serrated daggers.

Nom nom nom

The first bite also acts as a test bite; Great Whites aren't especially fussy eaters but it seem that they don't like the taste of some flesh. This has been something of a relief to surfers worldwide. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History there have been 2320 shark attacks on humans since 1580, this number is not just for Great Whites either, this is all sharks. It seems that Great Whites will use their torpedo attack or their teeth to investigate an object in their surroundings. Seems like a win-win for the sharks to me, have a taste, if she likes it: chow down. If she doesn't, at least the object's not fighting back. "Clever Girl".

One of the things that makes Great Whites such extraordinary hunters is their sense of perception. They are able to detect the electromagnetic field emitted by the movement of all living organisms. This is done by the 'Ampullae of Lorenzini', sensing organs found in most sharks and rays. Great Whites can detect half a billionth of a volt. To put that in some kind of context: Imagine if you will that you are in London, you're standing on one end of a very flat runway that flouts the rules of physics and doesn't follow the curvature of the Earth. Imagine then that your friend, your buddy, your pal is standing at the other end of this runway in Rome, roughly 1000 miles away. Your friend is flashing a torch powered by AA batteries. You can't see that flashing, your eyesight is not good enough. However, if you were a shark, and the 1000 mile runway was converted into a cubed area of the sea, and London & Rome were in fact under the ocean,and your buddy was a fish and the torch was your buddy's heartbeat and you, as a shark, were hungry but your buddy was hiding from you it wouldn't matter. You would find and eat your friend in one of his measly AA powered heartbeats. 

Ok, that was quite a complicated example but I'm sure you get the idea. 

Great Whites have been known to show problem solving capabilities and are therefore put in the higher echelons of animal intelligence. A report on one of the few fatal attacks on a human showed that the shark and positioned itself between would-be rescuers and the object of it's attack, possibly as a way of defending it's prize. When testing a prototype of an electronic shark repellent in South Africa, a researcher noted that within a few hours, all the White Sharks lured to the area with bait became very wary of the research vessel, offered baits and the researcher, having apparently learned that - in that particular context, at least - these formerly familiar objects often carried an unpleasant electric field.

There have been two documented incidents involving 'Orcas' attacking Great Whites. I realise this undermines my previous point about Apex's and seals but if you fancy messing with a Great White after reading the following then be my guest (law suits not expected). The first was in 1997 when an Orca held a Great White upside down to induce 'tonic immobility' and then proceeded to eat the shark's liver once it had died. A similar thing happened in 2000. The fascinating thing is that after the two incidents the surrounding populous of about 100 Great Whites vanished completely, possibly to escape further attacks. I have no doubt that a few Great Whites could take on a single Orca and win but they're clearly not the ferocious, all-attacking, death machines they're made out to be. I blame it on Peter Benchley, Steven Spielberg and this ridiculous charade: