Journal of the sixtyfirst day on board

2nd July, 1999

There's a question that eventually always crops up when discussing sharks: are they "intelligent" animals or are they robots wrapped in meat and bones just following their instincts? Naturally, to reply to this question, one needs first to define intelligence. Is it the ability to learn? Or is it the ability to know your adapting to new conditions? Nobody can give a satisfactory reply to this question even if not referring to sharks specifically. But it is fact that sharks, although in many ways much more primitive than a lot of fish, have a bigger brain. In part that's due to the fact they are predators: the area dedicated to the sense of smell, for example, is incredibly developed. Thanks to this distinctly superior "cerebral capacity" sharks are capable of relatively complex behaviour.

A mako shark
photographed in California