Sharks are interesting creatures, aren’t they? Capable of so much damage and incredibly misunderstood by the wider public, they’ve evolved to be perfect hunters. They’ve been around for some 450 million years, although the ones that we’d recognize as sharks showed up somewhere around 380 million years ago. In that time, evolution has shaped them into predators par excellence. Given the damage they’re capable of inflicting, it’s no wonder that we humans are scared of them, and since humans in general are a little likely to shoot first and ask questions later, we’ve been… well, we’ve been pretty awful to them. It’s been proven time and time again that we’re not on the menu — a very high percentage of bites are cases of mistaken identity — but the thought of a shark attack is so terrifying that reason goes out the window.
They have many hunting techniques and they’re curious creatures. That’s proven in the video above by Carlos Gauna, a man who spends a whole lot of time flying drones over the sea in search of a great white shark. He’s captured some truly stunning footage, often involving surfers unaware of what’s lurking beneath them, but in this particular bit of footage, we see a large great white checking out the shadow of Gauna’s drone.
While Gauna uses a drone to film the sharks without their knowing, this time he decided to see what they’d do if he got as close as possible. In the interests of research, of course. “The information gathered from this also helps me be mindful of where to fly the drone to avoid interfering with the sharks,” he explained. “Drone observations are vital to monitoring shark behavior but it seems the shadow, in certain conditions is the only thing that can affect the shark’s natural movements.”
