Punch a shark, whistle away a bear: how to survive deadly encounters
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Version 0 of 1. Punching sharks in the face isn’t something to be attempted lightly, but in the jaws of death it can be the best means of remaining uneaten, as this weekend’s incident involving a shark attack on a British woman attests. Here are some tips to help you remain alive should you face any other predators. Bears Being rather chunky animals with their heads held low, bears don’t always anticipate a Karrimor-covered ape lunging through the undergrowth towards them. To remedy this, make lots of noise while walking to ensure all local bears know you are coming. Many hikers whistle inane tunes to themselves not because they are dosed up on the joys of spring, but because they are very publicly fearing for their own lives. If you happen to be hiking in the Rockies of North America, be very careful never to stroll accidentally between a mother and her nearby cubs. This is very bad. If this happens to you, you’ll know things are escalating when you hear the tell-tale sound of trees snapping and boulders scattering as a mother bear makes a dash toward your throat. Stay calm, for it is in these vital few seconds that you must correctly identify which species of bear is running at you. If it is a grizzly bear, remember to play dead as it leaps upon your body. Hopefully it’ll soon get bored and all will be fine. However, if it’s a black bear that is upon you, writhing and slashing at your torso, you must definitely not play dead. You must fight back, else you may be eaten. Black bears and grizzlies often look alike – but don’t worry, like I said, you’ll have at least have three or four seconds to determine the species. Grizzly bears have bigger shoulders, I think. Or is that black bears? I can’t remember. You’ll be fine. Crocodile If you find yourself in a position where you’re having to punch a crocodile in the face, it’s fair to say that you’ve ignored the key signs: 1) The snapping of jaws warning that you are too close to said crocodile with your cameraphone; 2) the intense hissing noise as it warns you to turn off the flash; and 3) the signs warning you that crocodiles are present and that you shouldn’t be showing off like Crocodile Dundee. True, in many parts of the world there aren’t signs. And sometimes crocodiles (particularly over two metres in length) will attack because they consider you food, not because you’re getting too close in a bid to get more likes on Instagram. If you happen to be near a water hole that large crocodiles are known to frequent, you can limit the potential for attack by staying away from the water. The water is not your place. Avoid late-night swims. Actually, avoid swimming at all. You are not a water animal. On a boat, keep arms and legs on board at all times. If you see a crocodile, keep your eyes on it. Stare it out, like starlings mobbing a hawk. If it knows you’re aware of it, the croc has lost its edge. It’ll soon be gone. For now. It’s nothing personal, you understand. Killer wasps Britain seems to have divided into two camps on wasps, which are of course capable of killing through allergy. Some choose to flail their arms around in a desperate attempt to deter the inquisitive creatures; others freeze like statues, as if wasps are somehow, like the Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park, incapable of seeing still objects. The truth is that wasps actually see pretty well, and so the ice-cream smeared on your child’s lips remains to them a high-calorie option that they want to know more about. The temptation is to kill them when they buzz around us at picnics, but try not to do this. When sensing the tiny chemical clouds that leak from dying wasps, nest-mates are known to respond with impressive vim and get more even more angry. The common wasp is one of the world’s most inquisitive and annoying wasps when compared with most wasp species, many of which do impressive service for humankind by pollinating flowers and removing pests. I once saw in a British service station a busload of hardy Australians running away from wasps, so they seem to be gaining quite the killer reputation. The best advice to ward them off? I find, like a warplane releasing chaff to deter a radar-guided missile, dropping empty fizzy-drink cans a safe-distance from the picnic often works. As does staying indoors with the doors and windows shut. Squid Picture the scene. You’re on an open-sea dive at night. You bob there, a few metres down beneath your boat, trying to make out the shadows that dart and loop beneath you. You stare down at the abyss and the abyss stares back at you with eyes that are very like your own ... but different. Bigger. There are lots of them down there. These creatures have tentacles. They are approaching curiously. They are squid, Humboldt squid, and are almost as big as you. Oh, what’s this? They’re coming closer now. Oh, wow, they’re touching you now. They are feeling up your legs and arms and torso with their long muscular tentacles. Oh, what’s that? One is also on your face now. They’re pulling. Downwards. They’re tugging you down into the dark depths where they can do unspeakable things to you in atmospheres more suitable to their digestion. And now, Christ, they’re biting you too, with razor sharp beaks hidden amongst their maze of limbs. Their hooked tentacles pull you downwards with greater force now. The pressure rises. You drop 30 feet in a few seconds. Your eardrums almost rupture. You scream. But then … you are suddenly let go by the squid as if it was all some big mistake. You desperately swim back to your boat and live to tell the tale. This is what is alleged to have happened to the marine biologist Alex Kerstitch in 1990. The message? Some wild animals, well, we have no idea about how we might stop them eating us. Perhaps we should more readily accept our natural place in the foodweb of life. Vampire bats Alexander von Humboldt, the famed explorer after whom the squid in the above section was named, had a thing about being eaten. He rather liked the idea of being attacked by vampire bats. “Many a night have I slept with my foot out of the hammock to tempt this winged surgeon, expecting that he would be there; but it was all in vain; the vampire never sucked me, and I could never account for his not doing so,” he recorded in his diary, forlornly. Decades later, the honour of being attacked by vampire bats fell instead to another explorer. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, spent many of his formative years in South America where he often came across the bats. “As I wear stockings of a night, wrap myself well in my blanket, and often cover my face with a handkerchief, I have hitherto escaped being bitten,” he wrote in his journal, sounding not unlike an insomniac four-year-old on Halloween. “... but they often come to my hammock in search of a vulnerable point.” His camp-mates were apparently besieged nightly by the stealthy bloodlust of the incredible bats. Wallace’s advice to avoid them? “The best preventative against them is to keep a lamp burning all night,” is as much as he offers. Nowadays we’ve come up with a much more gung ho method: destroying with chainsaws the natural habitats on which they depend. Many populations still survive however, feeding on livestock. Who’s the real monster? Though all these animals excite us and capture our interests in all sorts of ways, they aren’t monsters. If you do end up face to jaw with any of these creatures, remember that they occupied the habitat first: afford them the respect they deserve, and sometimes, often, they’ll offer the same back. |