Word: preyed
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Then there's the sneak attack. The shark is in the right place to find its prey, it is the right time to feed, and the target is the right size. At sunset on July 6 off Pensacola, Fla., Jessie Arbogast, 8, apparently fit the needs of a bull shark. Dusk is one of the shark's feeding periods; the boy was in the shallow water where the bull prowls; and splashing about, Jessie may have seemed to be a large fish. The shark pounced. The ensuing attack and the boy's struggle to survive have stirred an inchoate fascination...
...sharks that account for most attacks on people--the great whites, the tigers and the bull sharks--have been studied extensively. We now know that great white sharks keep their blood warmer than the surrounding water, that tiger sharks do not return to the site of an attack to prey again, and that bull sharks have the highest levels of testosterone measured in any creature, land or sea. Each has a different diet, a different behavior pattern and a different mode of attack...
Sharks are one of nature's ultimate designs, tested over 400 million years--confident, sleek and lethal (see graphic). Studies show some sharks can measure changes in electric currents as tiny as five-billionths of a volt. They use this ability to hunt for prey hidden under the sand and to navigate according to the earth's magnetic field. "They are like some high-tech AWACS thing, with all their sensors," says Sean Van Sommeran, executive director of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif. When they do attack a human, the weight of evidence now suggests, they...
Unlike tigers and bulls, great whites hunt mostly during the day, and their preferred method of attack is to shoot up vertically from 30 ft. down, knocking their prey right out of the water with the impact. Researchers in South Africa have produced spectacular footage of great whites leaping 15 ft. into the air with a seal in their teeth...
...attacks on humans have been on the increase in Hawaii, and one reason, says John Naughton of Hawaii's Habitat Conservation Program, may be the increase in seagoing green turtles since they were protected in the 1970s. "Turtles come close to the shore, and the tigers follow them to prey on them. That puts them in the same area as swimmers and surfers." Tigers are slower swimmers than great whites and not as good at surprise. Human victims often see the shark before it closes in to attack. But tigers are persistent. "If you are bitten by a tiger...