Articles provided by RE-Reston.com

Due to hollywood movies about sharks many people think of them as predatory creatures that will hunt down humans due to be blood thirsty. On the contrary sharks, don't even like eating humans. The blood of humans doesn't taste the same as the food they actually eat which is why when a person is attacked it usually just one bite.

What do these sleek hunters of the deep eat? Largely sea creatures, ranging from fish to seals and other mid-sized aquatic life. Natural selection has served these animals well, resulting in swift quick movements and the glint of sharp teeth. If their appearance scares us, consider how fearsome it must be to smaller prey.

Frequently, what happens is that humans cause the sharks to attack by inadvertently copying natural animal activity. They swim way out in the ocean, paddling on their surf boards as they attempt to ride the crest of a great big wave. They don't realize that they seem just like injured seals to the sharks swimming nearby. The result is a very regrettable accident, like a swimmer getting sucked up in a fierce undertow. The people shouldn't be doing what they're doing where they're doing it.

Despite this, on a very low number of people out of the millions who spend time at the beach each year get killed by sharks. Also, there are fewer shark attacks each year than you might expect and of the 90 or so that do occur, most only result in minor bumps and grazes. Whilst it is tragic that anyone should get killed by a shark, incidents involving sharks can be considered accidents rather than malicious attacks.

You know what's about 10 times more dangerous to people than sharks? Falling coconuts. Really. Even the most aggressive of the sharks, the tiger shark and the great white shark, rarely attack humans. Heck, driving to the beach is far more dangerous as driving kills more than 40,000 people each year in the US alone.

So when a shark does bite a person, pity the victim their suffering. But also pity the hundreds of sharks that will be killed in the name of pointless retribution. Those animals don't understand why we're suddenly hunting them, they're not like people in that they can be told why they're being punished. The only choices we have are to kill them all or learn to coexist peacefully. And trying to do the former hasn't kept us safe.