"Can sharks REALLY "smell blood in the water"?" Topic
9 Posts
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Winston Smith | 29 Apr 2016 12:32 p.m. PST |
This is a … legend I have always had my doubts about. Consider this scenario. A pirate with a sword wound falls overboard. He loses a pint of blood. Am I supposed to believe that a shark half a mile can smell the blood? Do the math on the concentration. Then figure speed of the current. Popular mythology has sharks converging from all directions to attack him. I am prepared to believe that they can sense the sounds and vibrations of him thrashing about. Water is a very good conductor of sound. But to detect parts per trillion of blood? That they can track such concentrations to its source? And directionally? I have my doubts. |
haywire | 29 Apr 2016 12:41 p.m. PST |
Its basically the same as bloodhounds tracking a scent. The blood has to reach them, either through ocean current or by already coming in contact with part of the trail. If the shark is ten miles away and the current is flowing in the opposite direction, I highly doubt it. But if the current was bringing the blood to the shark, it will home in on it. |
bsrlee | 29 Apr 2016 12:48 p.m. PST |
They can also detect urine and similar materials, the early 20th Century Big Game fishers often used dog carcases for bait or 'burley' to lure sharks into areas where they were fishing (dogs are vaguely related to seals). Sharks generally seem to be able to detect very small traces of whatever they are interested in – Great Whites mob dead whale carcasses for instance, travelling considerable distances to get a feed. But its not at the level of pour a pint of blood in the water and everything for miles immediately materialises and starts chomping – there is usually a pattern that can be exploited – sharks are 'garbage guts' and will follow slow moving ships looking for a free feed of garbage tossed overboard, and a fair number of small fish also follow slow boats treating them as a mobile reef so there is always something for the sharks to eat. So if the proverbial pirate fell overboard, bleeding or not, he would likely find a shark willing to take a nibble. |
x42brown | 29 Apr 2016 12:51 p.m. PST |
They have a very acute sense of smell maybe even to parts per trillion but even at that I don't think half a mile even if they did mammalian flesh is mot really their preferred diet so would it attract that much. The noise of something in trouble I think would be the main attraction. x42 |
vtsaogames | 29 Apr 2016 12:57 p.m. PST |
Don't know about sharks but dogs have extremely acute sense of smell. Every time science develops a way to measure smell, dogs are still way more sensitive. My grandfather used to cook on a liberty ship. Sharks would tail the ship for days waiting for him to dump food scraps. |
The Beast Rampant | 29 Apr 2016 12:58 p.m. PST |
sharks are 'garbage guts' and will follow slow moving ships looking for a free feed of garbage tossed overboard Oceanic White-tips, the likely origin of the term "sea dog". They are the most likely culprits for shark attacks in the open ocean. |
Zephyr1 | 29 Apr 2016 2:09 p.m. PST |
The smell of a long-unbathed pirate probably cancels out the smell of the blood… ;-) |
etotheipi | 29 Apr 2016 2:20 p.m. PST |
"Sharks" is imprecise, so an imprecise estimate of 1 ppm is what sharks can smell. I would think time would be the biggest issue. I've done dispersion modeling in the ocean … you can get liquids to stay together in "clumps" (low dispersion volumes) that move with the currents, but they move at the speed of current then. Blood could go a long way and stay at a 1 ppm concentration. That would take a long time. |
Bashytubits | 30 Apr 2016 10:25 p.m. PST |
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