Great white shark attack!

Note: I tried to insert the Google Video I'm talking about below, but the darn thing just wouldn't work, and I got tired of trying to make it work. So click here to see the video of the great white shark, then come back and read the entry.

Planet Earth didn't disappoint! This excerpt, of a great white shark eating a seal off the coast of South Africa, is absolutely amazing. They slowed one second of film into 40 seconds of footage -- the detail on the TV (and we don't even have HDTV) was incredible. Still, it's better on TV than it is in this video, so check it out. The episode "Pole to Pole" airs on Discovery again April 1 at 11 am, April 22 at 9 am, and April 22 at 6 pm, and this segment occurs about 25 minutes into it.

This video clip is from the BBC broadcast, which apparently aired in fall 2006, and is narrated by David Attenborough, who also did the Blue Planet narration for both BBC and Discovery. The Discovery version of Planet Earth, however, features Sigourney Weaver at the mike.

The really cool thing about great whites, I think, is that they always show them in action -- usually, that means eating something. But because you have a sense of how big the prey is (we've all seen seals at the zoo), you get a really good sense of how big the shark is (humongous!!!). Blue whales, on the other hand, are MUCH bigger, but I can never wrap my mind around just HOW big they are. Every shot of a blue whale is, by necessity, shot from a helicopter overhead, in the middle of the open ocean. I'm always told that the blue whale is the largest animal to ever have lived on this planet, and that they can weigh up to 200 tons, which is twice as large as the biggest dinosaur, but even though I've seen dinosaur skeletons, I cannot mentally digest what that means about the size of a blue whale. For example, check out this description from the Wikipedia entry on blue whales:

"The longest whale measured by scientists at the American National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML) was 29.9 m long (98 ft) — about the same length as a Boeing 737 aeroplane or three double-decker buses. A Blue Whale's tongue is about the size of an elephant and 50 humans could stand in its mouth: although the mouth is as large as a small garage, the dimensions of its throat are such that a blue whale cannot swallow an object wider than a beach ball. Its heart is close to the size of a small car and is the largest known in any animal. A human baby could squeeze into a Blue Whale's aorta, which is about 23 centimetres (9 inches) in diameter. During the first 7 months of its life, a Blue Whale calf drinks approximately 400 litres (100 US gallons) of milk every day. Blue Whale calves gain weight as quickly as 90 kg (200 pounds) every 24 hours. Even at birth, they weigh up to 2700 kg (6000 lb) – the same as a fully-grown hippopotamus."

A baby swimming through its aorta? Heart the size of my Cabrio? Newborns the size of a hippo? It just sounds so illogical. Maybe it's just too big for me to appreciate? Is that possible? After many years, I've been able to figure out how small viruses and bacteria are, but maybe I'll just never be able to think about big things in the right way... maybe I figured out the bacteria because I've looked at them under a microscope. I guess that means I need to go swim next to a blue whale myself to get the necessary sensory stimuli for understanding. (You can see the Planet Earth video segment about blue whales, from the end of the episode "Deep Ocean" here.)

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I had a minor bit of excitement this afternoon. While I was walking home from school, about to cross Chestnut Street, I saw a lot of smoke on the other side of the street. A woman waiting at the nearby bus stop also spotted it and saw me take out my cell phone, confirming that it was a fire so I could call 911. The fire truck came within a few minutes and put it out. It was a moderate-sized brush fire, started (I suspect) by a cigarette dropped on the mulch, and fueled by the wind. As I was calling 911, a drug rep came out of the building and also saw the fire, but noticed the nearby hose hookup, and tried to turn on the hose, only to find out that the water supply hadn't been turned on. When the firemen arrived, the first thing THEY tried to do was turn on the hose also, despite me telling them that we had already tried that. Thanks, guys. Oh well. It felt good to save the day! ;)