It is known that sharks have an outstanding sense of smell. These "relentless predators" will not refuse either fish or human. A former NASA engineer decided to find out which scent would attract sharks more: human blood or fish blood?
Mark Rober, now creating content on YouTube, decided to conduct a truly creepy experiment by placing human blood and fish blood on two modified surfboards. The liquid was poured into the ocean for an hour, while the team counted the sharks that approached each of the boards.
Blood Board
Using a drone, Rober and his team counted that sharks approached the fish blood board 134 times, which allowed the fish blood to earn the title of "more attractive blood for sharks."
To conduct this experiment, Rober traveled to Bermuda, where he and a friend prepared a 22-liter cocktail made from 20 dead fish. As for the human blood, there were certain difficulties, as obtaining such a quantity of vital fluid for a human is illegal, so it was partially diluted with cow's blood.
Thus, the team placed barrels with the two types of blood on two surfboards, while a third was filled with seawater. Each board was equipped with a pumping system that slowly released the liquid into the water over the course of an hour.
After Rober's team sailed a sufficient distance away, a drone was launched to monitor the sharks. For the first 20 minutes, no activity was observed in the water. However, Rober then noticed the first bump underwater at the board with mammal blood.
In the end, sharks approached the board with human and cow blood only 8 times, while the board with seawater saw no visits at all. Meanwhile, the surfboard with fish blood attracted sharks a total of 134 times!
This was already Mark Rober's second attempt to find out what is more attractive to sharks. "One of the limitations of the previous experiment was that the boards might have been too close to our boat," Rober commented. "It's quite possible that some sharks smelled the blood but didn't investigate it, as they were just waiting for scraps from the boat."
