How to train your shark

Sharks are not the mindless eating machines Hollywood would have us believe

Shark
(Image credit: (Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium))

Sharks are monsters, this we know. They prowl the Earth's oceans killing indiscriminately, with dead eyes and the compassion of Charybdis. So why, then, when I stand in front of the Ocean Exhibit at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, is it not a constant blood bath?

The 100,000-gallon exhibit is two stories tall and teeming with 50 different species of life. Eight-hundred-pound Queensland groupers lumber through the tank with silent stares. A leopard-print laced moray eel slinks along the rocks on the wall. Stingrays, snapper, and five species of tang — blue, yellow, sailfin, unicorn, and regal — flit to and fro, while schools of smaller fish break and reform as three blacktip reef sharks rip through the water like a squadron of fighter jets.

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Jason Bittel serves up science for picky eaters on his website, BittelMeThis.com. He writes frequently for Slate and OnEarth. And he's probably suffering from poison ivy as you read this.