Shark Week begins - July 22

Obligatory disclaimer: I hate my life. A new caveat: I hate my family even more; I did not expect to hate anything more than my life, yet surprisingly, I do. We, in our family, do not get along with each other, and with everyone/anyone else,…this is something else, and it is personal, so I am not going to dwell very much on it… this time. In addition, speaking of lives… ‘Shark Week’ of the Discovery channel is beginning today…on the Discovery channel…and it is bringing celebrities – human celebrities, and this brings us back to life: do any of those people have it?

No, seriously, this year’s ‘Shark Week’ of Discovery is bringing us Bear Grylls, and Shaq, and Ronda Rousey – all people who are supposed to be really famous and monumental in the lives of the peons, and they are all appearing on Discovery channel, and- wait. Isn’t Discovery channel supposed to educate, rather than entertain…as opposed to TMZ or whatever?

Rewind? Last year, a famous athlete of a swimmer – whether Michael Phelps or someone else, I neither remember nor care, admittedly – appeared on ‘Shark Week’, where he raced…CGI’d sharks. Basically, this was a free promo for the bloke, but since I do not remember him appearing ever in anything in the last year, (we are talking about summer of 2017 here), I guess that it did not work out for him. Why do Bear Grylls, and Shaq, and Ronda Rousey think that it will work for them?

Well, when it comes Ronda Rousey we might be off to something here. Ever since her defeat in MMA (or whatever it is called), her life was never the same, in a sad way. These days she might be on WWF, but it is not the same, and as for her TV debut…

No, seriously, Ronda Rousey was on ‘Blindspot’, (yes, the same TV series that we are discussing on occasion here), at the end of S2…for about one or two episodes, and that was it. Considering that ‘Blindspot’ had worked her up in its promo videos, this was weird…in an AoS way. Unlike the other Marvel TV series, (even ‘InHumans’), AoS had to deal with actors that went more than came, and as a result the main actors and their characters got reshuffled to different roles very often, especially in the later seasons. Ronda Rousey’s aborted presence on ‘Blindspot’ brought the same feeling to ‘Blindspot’, especially S3, which might be one of the reasons why it was somewhat different from the previous seasons, and not exactly in a good way. Something went wrong for Ronda Rousey with ‘Blindspot’, so now she is trying her luck on ‘Shark Week’, alongside Shaq and Bear. Here’re kudos for them; Ronda, in particular, will be dealing with mako sharks, which is good, for they hunt fish rather than marine mammals, but also bull sharks, which is work – these sharks are generalists and are game for anything, at least once, so if Ronda isn’t careful or dealing with CGI, she will be risking her life for real – and is it worth the (potential) fame?

The flip side, of course, is that unlike TMZ, WWF and the like, the Discovery channel was supposed to educate, rather than entertain, so why there are celebrities? What next, the World Wrestling Federation doing a number of shows with real life sharks also? The line between education and entertainment is blurring on the Discovery channel, and that isn’t good: for a while, Impossible Pictures™, also did educational shows, but then they got into entertainment, and it was the beginning of their end, until BBC pulled the, out of their misery for good. Will the Discovery channel go down the same route? We will just have to wait and see.

This is it for this time; see you all soon!

Post-Shark Week rant

And so, Shark Week has come and gone, and all I can say is – fake. It’s, really, like the Animal Planet shows, like “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or whatever – deliberately fake information, pretending to be real. The only question is why.

I admit that unlike the AP shows Discovery has tried to make its shark week specials both entertaining and educational, but what it did instead was irritate various scientists who were quote mined by the shows, or downright tricked, etc. True, there was a certain catch-22 (or something similar) factor as well: the shows (and Discovery?) needed rich sponsors, but these sponsors wanted to sponsor something, well, respectable, and so Shark Week shows had to be both educational and entertaining...only they hadn’t.

Seriously, they could have just made them educational; showing, for example, how hammerhead sharks get measured up in the wild, live, is already very exciting – but instead Discovery made this a part of a program that mainly talks about a giant and mythical hammerhead, called “Old Hitler” and “The Harbourmaster”. This is simply wrong.

Firstly, and mainly, hammerhead sharks are less dangerous to humans than great white, bull and tiger sharks. Their particular head shape makes them better hunters on the sea floor, but less so in the open ocean (unlike the tiger sharks, say), and thus makes them less likely to encounter humans, even scientists and fishermen, live. 

And also, “Old Hitler”? Seriously? The chancellor of the Third Reich was a piece of shit accountable for 6+ years of blood, smoke and tears – much more than any shark, regardless of size, ever did. To name any animal (even fish) after him is just wrong. Also – rather dumb. Yes, you can give various animals human names, but they are not really their names, but names that people give them for their own convenience. If animals do have names that they give to each other, they probably do not sound very human...

Getting back on track, if you discount their latest mocumentary about the megalodon, Shark Week at least has tried to be somewhat scientific; its’ AP counterparts, like the before-mentioned “Man-Eating Super Wolves” did not. It even admitted that in the disclaimer, making one wonder why did it was made and aired at all? In the decades past, AP was educational, if somewhat naive (just look at the old episodes of “Wild Kingdom”), now it’s either pure make-believe (like the “Lost Tapes” series), something reminiscent of “Urban Tarzan” from Spike, albeit less staged, or something like “The Pool Master”, which isn’t about animals at all – and since the channel is called, well, Animal Planet, it makes one wonder why is “The Pool Master” aired there at all. At least “Too Cute” or “Pit Bulls and Parolees” have some animals in them, for example... But “Man-Eating Super Wolves” is fake, just as much as of the transformations in the latest “Scooby-Doo” movie are. At least “Scooby-Doo”, the hound that just does not die, is just a cartoon and does not pretend to be anything else. “Super Wolves” pretend to be real...

 

And so, in conclusion, I am forced to admit: Discovery channel has deteriorated somewhat in quality of the shows, but it is still far ahead in the same quality ‘field’ as compared to Animal Planet.

Upcoming 'Shark week' rant

And so, once again, Shark week is almost upon us in Canada. Hooray! Sharks, after all, are magnificent and powerful creatures, alpha predators of the oceans, just as big cats or bears are on land, and crocodiles and alligators are in fresh water.

Sharks are very varying creatures. For example, both the whale shark and the basking shark are filter feeders, but whereas the basking shark just swims around with an open mouth, with the water flowing in and out (through the gills), the whale shark actively pumps the plankton-filled liquid and in general is a more active fish among the two. The megamouth shark, which is also a filter feeder, does its own thing by actively feeding on plankton at night, when its competition (including the baleen whales) is asleep. 

The carnivorous sharks, of course, are an even more diverse group. The great white shark is Jaws, one of the most powerful denizens of the ocean; only the killer whale (and perhaps the sperm whale) can defeat it. The bull shark is smaller, but still very solidly built, and is one of the few fish that can live both in fresh and salt water. The sand tiger shark (no relation to the actual tiger shark) and the blue shark, on the other hand, are graceful inhabitants of the open waters, specializing in catch fish, not warm-blooded mammals and birds, as the great white shark does – and the list goes on.

Some of the sharks are downright bizarre – the aforementioned thresher shark with its remarkable tail; the hammerhead shark with its head; the sawnose shark which is similar to the better-known sawfish because it also has a saw on its nose – etc. All of these features make sharks stars of the ocean world – and of the Shark week that will be airing on the Discovery channel starting from August 10. 

Sadly, there is a rather big fly in the ointment, and it is called “Megalodon: The New Evidence”. It is a sequel to the previous mocumentary, “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives”. That particular film played with the concept of Megalodon surviving in modern times, feeding on such animals as the humpback whales...and for a while it led many people astray, by making them think that this was a real documentary instead.

Now, in part this is his or her own fault – one should not be so gullible about what one sees on TV or the Internet...never mind. I need to go a make an appointment with my vet about the health of my unicorn that I have bought on EBay. That is an old story. The thing is that Discovery channel generally airs documentary films and series, which are based in real life; even on such specials as Shark week what we usually see are documentaries; the Megalodon duology (and before that – the duology about the mermaids) are not – they’re fiction, just like the Sharknado or the Mega-Shark films are.

Now, Discovery channel currently does not have it as bad as the Animal Planet, by comparison; they still do not regularly air such tripe as “Man-Eating Super Wolves” or “Zombie Cats”, etc. But this is a disturbing tendency all the same.

If we are talking about sharks, what about Megalodon itself? Can it still be real? No. Sharks do not readily leave remains, other than their teeth and the occasional backbone vertebra, but their teeth quite take up the slack, and people find them very often. Megalodon teeth in this case take a very specific position: they are fossilized, not fresh. There are no fresh Megalodon teeth, which means – that there are no live Megalodon sharks living in modern oceans. Giant sharks, on the other hand, are a different story – in general, cold-blooded animals tend to grow throughout their lives, and great white sharks, in particular, can reach 3, or even 4.5 m in length: still smaller than Megalodon was, but far bigger than a human is. This is more than enough to fill-in Megalodon’s econiche.

And what econiche is that? That of a mega-predator, of course. Megalodon was the biggest shark of all times, of course, but it was also a part of the mega-fauna of the previous Cenozoic epochs. During that time, most animals were larger than their current relatives are, and the same goes for the sharks.

Speaking of relatives, there is some speculation that Megalodon might be related to the mako sharks. While the great white shark evolved into a powerhouse, the mako (two species) evolved into the aquatic analogue of the cheetah (sort of) – it is the only fish fast enough to catch and kill the legendary swordfish. Real life being what it is, however, sometimes the swordfish is the one who comes on top and dead or dying mako sharks were found, with pieces of the swordfish’s sword still in them – but that’s not the point. The point is that some scientists believe that Megalodon was more closely related to the mako than to the great white, and others – that the mako is the close relative of the great white, and Megalodon is related to neither, and if we don’t even fully know to whom Megalodon was related to, then how do we know what it looked like? Any depiction of the Megalodon is fully speculative, period – maybe it looked like a giant bull shark instead, who knows...

Back to the econiche. The great white shark has taken over Megalodon’s place – to a point: it still does not attack and eat whales. But it does not need to – the killer whale does it instead. Smarter and more social than any shark, even the great white, the killer whale does an admirable job of killing baleen whales, sharks, giant squid and other denizens of the oceans. Not bad for a relative newcomer to Earth – just like humans, the killer whale is very much a modern animal.

The shark, on the other hand, is very old – they have been around roughly since the Devonian, over 300 million years ago in the past, and they were able to handle everything that the Earth, and the universe, threw at them. Lately, this includes humans, who kill many more sharks than sharks kill people. To paraphrase Josef Augusta, a famous paleontologist, ‘the hunter man of the Pleistocene had little impact on nature, unlike the gatherer man of the Holocene’. These are true words, and hopefully, the upcoming Shark week shall discuss them as well.

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Discovery channel: "Russian Yeti" and the Yeti 'family'

And so, last night I watched Discovery’s latest special – “Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives”. A mockumentary, made in style of Discovery’s films about the dragons, the mermaids, and the giant shark Megalodon, it was a fun film to see. It was designed in “The Blair Witch Project” style, as an American explorer Mike, and his trusty Russian sidekick/interpreter Mila, went into the wild Urals mountains to discover the truth – whether the Russian Yeti has killed 9 student tourists back in 1959. Designed as an action/cryptozoological film rather than a scientific one (the Mermaids duology comes to mind), it is very hard, if not pointless, to discuss the scientific aspects of the film. However, the titular cryptid, the yeti, does deserve some discussion, to say the least.

The tales and myths of giant apes and wild men of the woods have come from all over the world, and the territory of former USSR was no exception. The most widespread and used name for these creatures there was Almasti, or Almas. They played a rather negative role in the local tales, and were generally similar to the Bigfoot and the Yeti in appearance (seriously, since when does it matter where the Yeti lives, in Russia or not? I mean, if there is a ‘Russian Yeti’, does it mean that there are also Indian, Tibetan, Nepalese Yetis and so forth? What is the difference? Even the film itself did not really dwell on this fact), but they had some important differences: they were more human-like in appearance (and Bigfoot, conversely, looks more ape-like than man-like), and they were rumored to be able to use fire, again unlike the Bigfoot. 

Some greater regional differences come to mind. The Mediterranean world, curiously, did not really have many ape-men myths; the fauns and the satyrs are different – they are part goat or horse, not ape, but Northern Europe had humanoid giants of their own – the trolls and ogres of the Norse, and further down, in the mainland Europe, the wildmen proper. At about 2.7 m in length, and weighing 200 kg, these beings were just as intimidating as the Bigfoot and the Yeti are, but they were more civilized, they had their own culture (supposedly), and were not as hairy, so they probably could use fire and make clothing of their own. The trolls and ogres of the Norse, were not just bigger (about 3.5 m tall and weighing about 360 kg), but they truly were civilized, complete with culture, civilization, and societies of their own. In fact, if you read some of the Norse (Scandinavian, Icelandic) folklore, one can realize that the Norse trolls and ogres belonged, practically, to a world parallel to humans, inhabited not just by them, but also by huldra, beings that were half spirit and half-real. This makes it hard to decide if trolls and ogres were real and not purely imaginary, one of versions of the vague and mysterious ‘Them’, imagined by humans to symbolize the anti-humans – but that is another tale.

Conversely, the wildmen of Europe, including the Almas, were less sophisticated and more ape-like – they probably could use fire, and were more man-, than ape-like, but that was it. No civilization for them, no sir! Further to the east, where the Yeti and the Bigfoot live, the ‘wild people’ become increasingly more ape-like and animalistic, without any evidence that they use fire, or tools, and clothing? It is non-existent. They are also relatively smaller than the European analogs: the Bigfoot is about 2.5 m high and weighs under 200 kg, its southern cousin the skunk ape is about as big as a man and weighs under 150 kg, the Yeti is about as big as the Bigfoot, though probably is, and so’s the Yowie. The Yowie, incidentally, is interesting, also because it lives in Australia, where all of the native mammals either hatched from eggs (the Monotremes), or are marsupial and have pouches to carry their tiny youngsters around. Higher primates, including the great apes and humans, are placental and have neither. This makes the Yowie’s identity especially puzzling – just what is it?..

“Russian Yeti” film did not mention the Yowie, but it did mention the Orang Pendek as the ‘Sumatran Yeti’, so to speak. The Orang Pendek is a humanoid creature, but at about 1-1.2 m in height and a very slight build, most cryptozoologists and other specialists feel that it has no connection to the Yeti, but is possibly the descendant of Homo Florensis, the Flores Man, instead. The latter has plenty of its own mystery; nobody is certain whether or not it was actually a dwarf race of modern humans, or a descendant of a more ancient species, Homo Erectus, for example. To connect the Orang Pendek to the Yeti family was wrong from the cryptoozological P.O.V. as well...

Getting back to the wildmen and ape-like creatures, “Russian Yeti” was a very good movie...and nothing more. Unlike “Mermaids”, or “Megalodon”, it did not pretend to be anything real, or to have been filmed in the real life. There are appropriate disclaimers and warnings that is drama, not suitable for children of all ages, and it should be treated as such by its audience.

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