Do surfers really look like seals? Here's a new hypothesis on what sharks are thinking when they attack, by mebwriter
Hypothesis". The idea is that most shark bites on surfers and swimmers occur because of the visual similarity between people and sharks’ typical prey.y the general public and many scientists, the Mistaken Identity Hypothesis is exactly that: an unproven hypothesis., marine biologists Eric Clua and Carl Meyer take on the Mistaken Identity Hypothesis and propose what they say is a more plausible explanation for shark bites.
“If you believe that sharks make mistakes, every single shark in the water is a potential threat to humans,” says Clua. “That makes all sharks the problem when actually, we don’t have a problem with 99.99 percent of sharks.”The Mistaken Identity Hypothesis was first proposed in 1974 by Henry David Baldridge. He noted that a person in a black wetsuit might look like a seal to sharks. It was a perfectly acceptable hypothesis, says Clua.
Clua says that as a student he was told that shark bites are the result of mistaken identity. But as he learned more about sharks and eventually became a sharkOne major issue is that the Mistaken Identity Hypothesis assumes that a similar visual appearance is enough to confuse sharks and ignores the important role of other senses used in predation. Vision is one sense sharks may use, says Clua, but they also possess several other senses that may be more significant when discriminating prey.
In fact, a recent study showed that the sounds made by paddling surfers are distinct from the sounds made by seals and turtles. Clua and Meyer say that given the array of sensory cues that sharks process, it is unlikely that they would mistake a human for a prey animal.
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