Shark attacks evoke really conflicting responses in me.   It’s gruesome. It’s terrifying. It’s sad. Of course, I feel badly for the people who die.

But I feel equally sorry for the animals killed in retribution for the attacks, like the proposed slaughter of 90 sharks in Reunion.

Sharks are predators. Sharks live in the ocean. Sharks are one of the few animals that remind us that we too have a place in the food chain. Sharks don’t care that we work in offices, that we love our children,  or that we tend to view life with a keen sense of irony.  When they attack out of error, curiosity, or perhaps genuine hunger, they take from us not just skin and bone, but our particularity, our human special-ness. Sharks reduce us to  meat. Continue reading →