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> >> Carcharodon carcharias (The Great White, or White Pointer) has eaten (not
>
> Are sharks the only sea animal dangerous to man as a predator rather than as
>a stinger? In the 1960's I read a few times of supergiant groupers swallowing
>snorkellers, and of one such victim that managed to escape through its gills.
>I read a small article in a 1960's or 1970's issue of `Skin Diver' (a USA
>scuba diving magazine) of a supergiant grouper trying to swallow a scuba
>diver: it suddenly rushed out of ambush and sucked him completely into its
>mouth, fins and all, but ejected him alive with his cylinder dented right in
>by the heavy crushing teeth on the inside of its gill cage. Arthur C.Clarke in
>a book "The Reefs of Taprobane" that he wrote about one of his diving
>expeditions, wrote that in the Elphinstone Inlet on the coast of Ceylon (now
>Sri Lanka) in an enormous sunken `floating dock' he saw a grouper over 20 feet
>long, and 4 feet wide side to side, and in his opinion able to swallow a scuba
>diver whole, cylinder and all.
Ah yes, monsters of the deep. The main difficulty a grouper would have I
suspect is getting the delicious diver out of that wrapping. The shark that
took John Lee at Aldinga shook him so violently (to get at the best part)
that it shook his wetsuit right off, even getting his boots off. Perhaps
one of the icthyologists would like to comment?
/Rat
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shelps@ac*.ma*.ad*.ed*.au* | Stephen Helps Ack! ___/|
FAX (08)232-3283 | Anaesthesia & Intensive Care \O.o|
Voice (08)224-5495 | University of Adelaide =(___)=
| ADELAIDE, 5005, South Australia U
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When we finally see the light, we see how once again we have fallen into
some foolish assumption, some oafish practice, or some witless blunder.
-Weinberg, p.152
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