Return Of The Great White Killer

By Mark Townsend
The Observer - UK
12-19-4

There was no warning, no trace of the menacing score that accompanied the mythic monster of Jaws. Teenager Nick Peterson could surely not have known what struck him as he stretched on his surfboard last week. The shark's first bite severed his torso, onlookers howled as the blue-green sea off Adelaide turned red with his blood.

Yet it was what happened during the next frenzied moments that has stunned the world's leading shark experts and sparked speculation that nature's sleekest predator, the great white shark, has never been more fearsome.

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Two attacks of such ferocity have never occurred so closely together and both events have raised questions about whether it is possible that after 400 million years the great shark has entered a new stage of development.

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The great white shark has become emblematic of mankind's obsession with monsters. Even now it is capable of stirring up a mythic fear. For, despite vast leaps of knowledge since Jaws was released 30 years ago, no one knows how big they can grow, how long they live or even how many are out there. Yet, although the deaths of Webb and Peterson have served to underline the shark's demonic status, conservationists last week were quick to point out that man rather than the shark is often to blame for the attacks.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1376918,00.html

The recent Aussie attack was horrific.

sharks are eating machines, and they make no distinctions between humans, seals, or other prey . . . if it's in the ocean and it looks like food, they attack it . . . only scary if you're a human who happens to invade their space . . .

Nor do customarily hunt in pairs.

This article is interesting in the way it points out the changes in behavior that has been observed recently.

The implications are as interesting as they are unsettling.

yellow.

when we know so little about thier behavior. We really haven't got much of a baseline. It's only in the last few years that we've figured out that they migrate, swim far off the coast and into cold deep water, how to keep them in captivity for more than a few days...

Really, we know almost nothing about White Sharks.