Flossing is so important!
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To get to prevention of shark death by fishing the perception of sharks as human killers needs to change. This particular effort probably isn’t going to move the perception of the general population because news and tabloids want the clicks usung “shark atacks!” But it will help, along with other efforts, change the perceptions of other scientists and, most particularly, lawmakers seeing studies and articles.
Most humans think in words and which words are used can change our thoughts.
ETA: @anon15383236 totally got to this point first.
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Depends, no?
I saw a man once whipping his dog. When he paused to catch his breath, the dog bit him.
Who was the “attacker,” and who reacted in self defense?
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The question was phrased with the pronoun “you.” I do not attack dogs.
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Ah, but what if a sheriff killed your mom, then years later you killed his son and followed his widow and children to the Bahamas and you tried to kill them all? Also, you are a shark.
(Thank you Jaws 4 for making people even dumber)
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Since more people die each year by vending machines falling on them, can we change that to “vending machine attacks”?
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Yes
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Good to hear! But if (like a friend of mine) you were to trip and fall on a dog, which then reflexively bit you, would you call that an “attack”?
I’m just saying that, as the experts covered in the article say, “attack” is, in many situations, an inflammatory descriptor.
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They’re just trying to reinforce white shark privilege.
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FWIW, medical term is Arthropod Assault
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Ah, but what if, just to be clear, you did not bite the dep-u-ty?
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No problem. Simply require them to balance their reporting of sharks “attacking” humans with humans “attacking” sharks. Here’s the former:
Vs. the latter:
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Interesting! Google suggests the term is commonly used as part of the phrase “Exaggerated arthropod assault”. I was going to make a joke about that until I saw the photos. Not funny.
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As an exercise, try mashing up the lyrics of either song when either tune is playing: Kumbaya <> Baby Shark. You will feel less tortured.
Yes, many people do.
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The only time a shark attack is appropriate is when it’s a salsa shark.
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Maybe, but I think they’re more likely to say A dog attacked me, or A dog bit me, no?
There may be limited uses of “dog attack,” say, news reports of “increased dog attacks,” but i think “shark attack” is far more common. And I agree with the article’s expert that its prevalence for describing instances in which people get bitten by sharks as “shark attacks!” contributes to a sensationalistic, destructive demonization of them.
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*shrugs
Personal semantics, what are ya gonna do?
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Agreed too. Something to keep in mind is that when people say shark attack, it immediately invites the sort of image you see in the post, of a great white coming out of the water to devour someone like a slow seal. That’s not what they all look like though.
For instance, by all accounts nurse sharks’ bites are really nasty. Every now and then they happen because they see an arm or finger and think it’s some smaller fish. For the most part, though, they happen because the sharks are lying on the bottom and someone steps on them, or some diver thinks that because they’re slow it’s safe to pester them.
I don’t think you’d call a dog biting you after you tripped on it an attack, but I do think those still get reported as shark attacks a lot of the time. And absolutely, that contributes to the notion of them as bloodthirsty monsters unlike other animals, which hurts conservation efforts. (Not that the 45th president wanted to conserve anything, for instance, but he actively wanted sharks gone.)
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