Do you have a favorite shark?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I was fishing in the Pacific between L.A. and North San Diego County. A whale shark swam under the boat. It was beautiful. Seemed about the size of a school bus.

That is fucking neat!

Me envy!

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I swear, you guys. Reading bits from this thread made me dream last night that I was tied to a chair near the bottom of a reef in the ocean waiting to hang out with a whale shark. Ended up being super scared it would eat me by accident and woke up. 😅 I know they're generally very safe, but GEEEZZZZZ!!

The thing is in reality, even with animals of any species we consider placid, like elephants and giraffes, they are still big, still tribal and defensive of their herds. A stingray killed Steve Irwin. Normally non aggressive to humans does not make them never dangerous. The bottom line for all wildlife is unless you are a trained biologist/zoologist it is always best to keep your distance. Steve knew what he was doing, and still died from interacting with a normally non aggressive species. 

Just because a particular species doesn't see humans as food, , they still can potentially see you as a threat. 

Humans still have not yet widely enough accepted that we are not an apex, but one of billions of species.

You keep using the term ‘apex’, when I think what you mean is ‘apex predator’ (‘apex’ simply means peak or the highest point of something).

Depending on which side of trophic habits you come down on, and how you define the term, humans may or may not be apex predators. Since we aren’t the natural prey for any other animals, we are apex predators. But since we get the majority of our calories from farming, we’re not apex predators. Probably the best view is that the predatory status of human varies depending on culture.

And the number of species hasn’t got anything to do with whether we’re apex predators or not.

Finally, there are less than ten million species, not ‘billions’.

Boru