Word: preys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...they strike: the hit-and-run, the bump-and-bite and the sneak attack. The hit-and-run is the most common. The shark may see the sole of a swimmer's foot, think it's a fish and take a bite before realizing this isn't its usual prey. It swims away, leaving the bleeding victim in need of stitches. The bump-and-bite is far more serious. Last year Chuck Anderson was training for a triathlon off Gulf Shores, Ala., when he was bumped by a bull shark, testing whether he was preyworthy. It decided that...
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...
...selling insects when he came to Bangkok five years ago. He grosses about $1,000 a day, clears about $225, and says business is getting better every year. The only cloud on the horizon: Thailand is running out of bugs. A lot are being consumed, but most have fallen prey to rural overuse of insecticides. (That has caused an ecological imbalance: when the insect population dipped, so did that of birds and reptiles that feed on them. And as those are natural predators of rodents, the rat population has exploded?and no one's predicting an imminent rat-meat craze...