Sharks: Serial Killers of the Sea?

Researchers using a criminology method made an interesting observation about great white sharks.  It turns out the hunting habits of the great whites were similar to human serial killers.

The scientists adapted geographic profiling, a mathematical technique used to track down serial criminals, to investigate the hunting habits of great whites.

They observed the location of 340 shark attacks and used the data to locate the sharks' "anchor points".

In criminal investigations, a series of linked crimes - usually murder, rape or arson - is used to determine the rough location of the perpetrator's "anchor point". Most often this is a home or place of work.

Serial killers or rapists tend to operate within a confined area around the anchor point, so knowing its location allows police to avoid being swamped with suspects and prioritise those who live or work in certain areas.

The shark scientists linked the "crimes" of great whites off the South African coast - attacks on seals - and found that the sharks had a well defined search base.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.


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Seeing as sharks have existed for millions of years longer than Homo Sapiens, the better headline would have been,"Serial Killers Mimic Sharks (and thousands of other predators)in the Way They Hunt Victims."

The same methods they talked about, looking for a weak target, shadowing them, and then ambush is how humans hunted for millennium until improved weaponry changed that.

Bad science! Bad scientists, go to your labs!
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Oh come on now. It makes me sad when scientific researchers mimic the media and word the titles in such a way to get attention and skew the information or the media shifts word around to do it themselves.
It’s called a hunting territory people. And we have known about it for a long time. Sharks aren’t "murderers", nor do they commit "crimes". They are predators. Turn this around to say "serial killers mimic predators in the wild" and it might have made more sense.
Love you guys at Neatorama, and glad you brought this up. I just hope people see it for what it is.
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