The Sharks— Part Two 343 



far as 200 miles up the river. He believed that the shark's ability to adapt 

 to fresh water was somehow related to the presence of urinary constitu- 

 ents in its blood. In man, those constituents may occur as the result of 

 a kidney disorder, and produce a toxic condition, uremia. Find how and 

 why the river-traveling shark can endure uremia, the physiologist be- 

 lieved, and vou will find a secret of man's body that man does not know. 

 The shark-tracking physiologist did not prove his theory, nor did he 

 discover why sharks go upriver. In fact, hardly anything is known about 

 the factors which produce the disquieting appearance of sharks in fresh 

 water, anywhere in the world. 



The river shark theory offered along the Ganges River and its tribu- 

 taries in India is a starkly simple one: sharks go up the river to get easily 

 obtained food— men, although mostly cadavers. Pilgrims bathing in the 

 sacred waters of the Ganges have been attacked by sharks during their 

 devotions; sharks have struck down as many as 20 river bathers in a 

 single year, killing half of them. So prevalent are the Ganges River sharks 

 that they have been recognized as a species, Carcharias gangeticiis. The 

 great naturalist of India, Francis Day, said that this shark "seldom loses 

 an opportunity of attacking the bather." Day also noted that the dead, 

 cast into the rivers for burial in sanctified waters, were frequently de- 

 voured by sharks. In a two-month period in 1959, sharks killed 5 persons 

 and mauled 30 others near the mouth of the Devi River of India. 



The ferocious Ganges River shark resembles the familiar Sand shark 

 {Carcharias taiirus) of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and the dread 

 Gray Nurse {Carcharias arenarius) of Australia. Although the Ganges 

 shark has been marauding in the rivers of India for centuries, little is 

 known about it. Life is cheap in many of this shark's riparian haunts, 

 and if a bather meets his death in the Ganges shark's jaws, that death will 

 not be reported so extensively as would a death by shark in, say, Florida. 



The Ganges shark ( Carcharias gangeticus ) . 



Courtesy, Sydney and Melbourne Publish Ine Co. from 

 The Fishes of Australia by G. P. Whitley, 1940 



