Can I Survive a Shark Attack by Gouging Out Its Eyes?

Although it can be intimidating, a shark is not invulnerable. Punching its nose, gouging its eyes, or grabbing its gills can stun the shark and give victims a chance to escape. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about shark attacks.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know?
From how Stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by
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to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and staff writer here
at how Stuff Works dot Com. With me is fellow

(00:21):
staff writer Charles Chuck Bryant. We call him Chuck. We
know him and love him as Chuck. We think pretty
highly Chuck. How you doing, Chuck? Good? Um good, ul
Hold on, I know what you're doing. I know what
you're doing. What is that from? Is it from? Is
it from Tremors? No, it's not from the awesome Fred
Ward movie Tremors? Is it another fred Board movie? Maybe

(00:42):
Uncommon Valor? No Remo williams now, huh, I'm just stumped.
What is it? It's from Jaws. That's right, that's right, yes,
and you know what I have seen Jaws. It means
that we're talking about sharks. You want to talk about sharks? Yea,
let's talking about sharks and more specifically, what you can
do if you get attacked by a shark. What can
you do? I mean, I imagine like just lay there

(01:03):
and you know, bleed to death. That's what I always
planned on doing. That's one I know you you have
you professed to have a black belt and running away,
but swimming away is not quite the same thing, my friend.
I think the best advice you can give is to
to try and hit the shark in the nose, grab
the shark by the gills, or polkas shark in the eyes.

(01:24):
I'll curly from the three stooges. Yeah, except I don't
know if you can get your fingers across both sides actually,
which is cheating. It is cheating. But all of those
three things could have an effect on on making the
shark leave for a couple of reasons. I know you
want to talk a little bit about the receptors and
the shark's nose. How do you know that we're in

(01:47):
sync that way? Okay, we're sympatico right, all right, So
there's this thing in the sharks nose. It's basically in
the shark's nose um the area of it called the
ampuleae of Lorenzi, right, which you can order with a
side of sconge ly exactly, and you're all set and
fat and happy and you should probably wear the napkin
in your shirt during that meal. Right. So, Um, basically,

(02:07):
what what this is is, it's a series of these
little pores than they're jelly filled, and they have little
hairs in them, and it's a sharks electrical receptors. Sharks
pick up very very faint um electrical impulses put out
by like living things. Um. They movement creates electricity, that

(02:27):
kind of thing, and the shark can it's one of
the sharks senses. It's a sense that we lack that
a shark has, right, and that's probably a reason why
they've been around for hundreds of millions of years and
we haven't precisely, Yeah, and uh, they haven't changed that much,
have they now? They haven't. They used to be a
lot bigger. The the megala what was it called, I
think of megalo don. He was like a great white

(02:49):
but three times a size, like sixty ft long. Perhaps
that's unsettling. Yeah, yeah, so but apparently, and I'm not
sure if this would have been the same case with
the megalodon. But you if you punch a shark in
these pores, the Amfula Lorenzi, Um, it will it be
tantam out to basically punching you in your soul? Right,
I mean, if you could, if you could detect maybe

(03:11):
punching you in your um, your your fillings, your mental fillings,
in your teeth while you were, you know, chewing aluminum foil,
I imagine would be something like that that will get
a shark's attention, will basically say back off, pal, right.
And there's a good chance that if you get ahold
of gills or you punch them in the nose like that,
if you're able to do this, that's the problem we
talked about, if you're able to have the wherewithal while

(03:33):
you're being attacked by a shark and taking in salt
water and possibly having a foot ripped off, that you
can bring it all together and say, let me go
find that I or that gill, or even make a
fist for that matter. Right. Um, it kind of makes
me wonder if something that another part on another podcast
we talked about, um, hysterical strength, if that comes into
play where you're just totally focused and just raining blows

(03:56):
upon some poor sharks thing, never come back, never come back.
That kind of yeah, like Cluver Lang and Rocky three
just go off on the shark's nose that much. Yeah. Um,
I don't know if that would happen. I wouldn't want
to know. And there are some considerations to actually fighting
a shark. We also want to say that our our
esteemed colleague Kristin Conger wrote this article and she did.
She she knows her stuff. She actually went in the

(04:18):
shark fighter. Yeah, um, Kristen. Kristen points out that when
you're going for shark's gills or its eyes, you're also
simultaneously presenting your arm, going hey, shark, check it out,
you want this, take it? And the flailing limb is
kind of what they're attracted to in the first place
and something they can easily grab hold of. But I
know the MythBusters on the Discovery Channel tested this out

(04:40):
by putting a sort of a rock'am sock 'em robot
that they made in a outside of a shark's cage,
and this thing, would you know, they attracted the shark
and it would punch the sky in the nose, which
was kind of punched the shark and it was kind
of cool, but I also kind of felt bad for
the shark because shark abuse. Yeah, they're just trying to
eat you know, they don't mean anything. I know, I
mean most most shark shark attacks are you know, mistaken identity,

(05:03):
right stake in identity and sharks. Some sharks are threatened
because of overfishing and by catch when they catch sharks
when they don't mean to. And uh, it's you know,
we need to protect the sharks, not not go around
punching them in the face. So, now that you know
this is very similar to martial arts. You never start
a fight with a shark, but if a shark starts
a fight with you, you can finish it. You should

(05:24):
probably brush up a little more and read Can I
survive a shark attack by gouging out its eyes? On
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