According to the latest data, sharks prefer to kill men instead of women. It turns out that the sea predators kill 9 times more men than women, report British media.
A study reveals that in 84% of shark attack cases with a fatal outcome, men were the ones who were killed. Prof. Darrell McPhee, who headed the study, shares that he and the team he worked with checked the results twice, since they too were taken aback.
The experts only looked at unprovoked attacks. Cases where people had purposeful contact with the sea predators or agitated them deliberately were not included in the investigation.
The professor explains the results due to the fact that more men than women participate in sports such as surfing, for example. McPhee further emphasizes that males tend to spend more time in the water and are ready to take on greater risks than the ladies, and the sharks take advantage of this.
The study was done by experts from Bond University in Queensland, Australia. The results showed that in the past 30 years, there has been a threefold increase in unprovoked shark attacks.
The highest number of victims were in Australia - according to official data, of 171 attacks, 32 were fatal. This high number of victims is owed to Australians' love of the sea, believes Prof. McPhee.
He reminds us that the size of the shark is also of importance - there are tiger, bull and great white sharks swimming in Australian waters. The professor believes that great whites are responsible for the majority of attacks.
In South Africa, there were slightly fewer attacks recorded by the sea predator - 132, with 28 of them ending in fatalities. In the US, there were 769 shark attacks, of which only 25 were fatal.
What's remarkable here is that even though the US had the highest recorded amount of shark bites, those that were fatal were very few in comparison. According to the professor, even though the attacks have increased, in actuality, the problem with these predators has been blown out of proportion.
He explains that the probability of being attacked by a shark is much lower than being attacked by someone in the street, for example.
