Althouse: "It was obviously eaten. What's gonna eat a shark that big?"

June 11, 2014

"It was obviously eaten. What's gonna eat a shark that big?"

"What could kill a 9ft great white?"

25 comments:

MaxedOutMama said...: A Brat?; 6/11/14, 8:05 AM
Curious George said...: Sharknado. 'nuff said.; 6/11/14, 8:06 AM
Edmund said...: What could kill a 9ft great white?

A 12 ft. great white?

... or more seriously, an Orca? Large, run in groups, meat eaters.
Also, the entire great white didn't have to be swallowed to give them the data they got, just the chunk with the sensor package.; 6/11/14, 8:22 AM
bridgecross said...: Their evidence is that data from shark's tracking tag, which had washed up on the shore later, showed a sudden temperature rise. This indicated the tag was eaten, or part of the shark to which the tag was attached. It could have been scavengers. They are jumping to the conclusion that it was eaten whole by a larger shark. Just silly.; 6/11/14, 8:25 AM
Bob Ellison said...: I'm no expert in Digital Tags on Extremely Large Predators Returning Data Showing Sudden Drops In Sea Level and Then Returning to the Surface, but it seems to me that they may be jumping to a conclusion.; 6/11/14, 8:26 AM
Al from Chgo said...: a 15 foot white shark...; 6/11/14, 8:32 AM
KLDAVIS said...: Umm...isn't it much, much more likely that something just bit off the tracking tag, as opposed to swallowing a 9' shark in one go? The original shark is probably still swimming, if a bit less straight.; 6/11/14, 8:33 AM
Tarrou said...: Reparations! Great White Oppressors is more like it!; 6/11/14, 8:44 AM
The Drill SGT said...: A big F'ing fish; 6/11/14, 8:49 AM
Hagar said...: Giant squid.; 6/11/14, 8:51 AM
FleetUSA said...: Amazing technology to trace this tag.; 6/11/14, 8:56 AM
Pettifogger said...: The kraken! Except Hagar beat me to it.; 6/11/14, 9:05 AM
Fritz said...: There is a pod of Killer Whales that has learned how to attack and kill Great Whites, but as I understand it, the temperature of the tag wasn't high enough to be in the belly of a Killer Whale.

Just for fun, I'm betting on the Greenland shark, which lives in cold waters, and has been known to eat moose and polar bears.; 6/11/14, 9:05 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: "What could kill a 9ft great white?"

A 10 ft nigga.

Oh man, I'm KILLING it today!; 6/11/14, 9:17 AM
Tibore said...: What half the posters here said: Why the presumptions? It doesn't need to be some extra-humongous predator to have done this. All it has to be is a bit of angry snapping at each other to lop off the part of the shark (most likely the dorsal fin) that had the tag.

That article is indulging in silly hyperventilation. If some human's ring was found in some animal somewhere, is the presumption that some animal swallowed the human whole? Or just nipped a finger or hand?; 6/11/14, 9:20 AM
Mark said...: Godzilla got noshy.; 6/11/14, 9:32 AM
pst314 said...: "...has become the topic of a documentary, with filmmaker David Riggs looking to find out what mystery creature was responsible for the attack."

This sounds like nothing more than hype for one of those hysterical pseudo-documentaries that fill so much time on cable TV.

"What could kill a 9ft great white?"

A bigger shark. But there's no money in the simple truth, so the filmmaker will give us 40 minutes of lies about what the scary monster might be, followed by 2 minutes of half-truths semi-admitting that it might just be a bigger shark.; 6/11/14, 9:39 AM
Wince said...: Maybe it wasn't exactly eaten, but instead ended up inside the rare species of the Great White Richard Gere?; 6/11/14, 9:57 AM
Shanna said...: ... or more seriously, an Orca? Large, run in groups, meat eaters.

I think they said it was too deep to be a mammal.

Probably just another shark.; 6/11/14, 9:59 AM
Shanna said...: Or maybe it was the temp that was too low to be a mammal? Either way, not a whale.; 6/11/14, 10:01 AM
SJ said...: On the one hand, a shark that is 9 ft long is large, compared to human swimmers.

On the other hand, a Great White Shark which is 9 ft (2.7 m) long is small, in the world of Great White sharks.

I seem to remember that Great Whites have been known to grow up to 21 ft (6.4 m) in length.

Was the killer an Orca? or something else?

Wiki also claims that Great Whites somehow manage to maintain a somewhat stable internal temperature above that of surrounding waters. Could it be that the warm temperature seen by the probe was inside another shark's stomach?; 6/11/14, 10:26 AM
Just asking questions (Jaq) said...: I think the point is that the temperature recorded would be consistent with a very large cold blooded creature, such as a larger shark, for example. Not an orca, not a small fish scavenging the body. It happened 1900 ft down.; 6/11/14, 11:59 AM
Jason said...: Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!; 6/11/14, 1:09 PM
Rusty said...: Maybe no one thing ate it. Maybe a school of shark eating things ate it.; 6/11/14, 1:53 PM
LordSomber said...: Just for fun, I'm betting on the Greenland shark, which lives in cold waters, and has been known to eat moose and polar bears.

Greenland sharks will go after smaller sharks and fish, but the bigger things like moose and polar bears were more likely carrion.
They are also much more sluggish than great whites, plus if you compared the jaws of each it's obvious a great white would do much more damage and much quicker.; 6/11/14, 4:32 PM