"Sharks bite fewer people each year than New Yorkers do ..."
Should you question the veracity of this statement, let me assure you that it comes from no less a venerable publication than National Geographic magazine (March 2007, p.129). Besides the obvious humour that this fact provided me, it made me wonder what on earth would make one New Yorker bite another and how many other people around the world go around biting their fellow humans.
We just have to turn on the TV to see the violence to which we humans are prone. We have become so used to seeing brutal bloody images on TV and computer games, in films and newspapers, that we are almost immune to their impact and in fact expect and demand them. Two examples from film spring to mind: the opening sequences of Saving Private Ryan and the gladiatorial fights in Gladiator. Both these films were incredibly popular and huge financial successes. It's not so much that we want to experience these brutalities ourselves as much as we take a perverse animal pleasure in seeing it happen to others. If you've ever seen a WWF wrestling tournament with stadiums packed with gullible spectators, you'll understand what I mean.
Which reminds me of a report I saw on the news yesterday that was no less bizarre than New Yorkers biting each other, but one to which people across the globe have become all too familiar - Taiwanese parliamentarians fist-fighting each other over a proposed bill to amend electoral laws. There was a shot of a horde of these distinguished leaders climbing over and into each other at the speaker's podium and then another shot of a dazed and staggering female member of parliament being helped to a chair to recover from her undoubtedly heroic tussle with an opposite member.
What triggers this sort of behaviour in a normally sane human being? I can understand such actions from a parent intent on defense of their lives, property and young, but a simple observation of our nearest cousin, the chimp, will illustrate how much further we have evolved from a species that needs to settle disputes through brawling and biting. For one, we humans are less muscular than our evolutionary forebears and secondly, our teeth have changed to suit the more mundane task of chewing than the aggressive act of biting. Yet, in some people, their ties to our evolutionary cousins remains powerful and occasionally the urge to go a-scrambling and a-whooping into their nearest rival overwhelms them.
Perhaps we would be better off going the way of the dolphins by becoming more peaceful sea dwelling mammals. At the very least there is less risk of being bitten.
Dion Marc Delport
9 May 2007