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Researchers Test Whether Sharks Enjoy Christmas Songs
Scientists plan to test whether sharks enjoy listening to Christmas pop songs, after US research showed fish could recognize melody. Chris Brown, senior marine biologist at the Loch Lomond aquarium, said seasonal music would be played through walkthrough underwater tunnels where they can be heard by dozens of nurse sharks, black-tip reef sharks, and ray species. Experts will then monitor the sharks' reactions to different songs. We'll play everything from Kim Wilde and Mel Smith's Rocking Around the Christmas Tree and Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade to Wham's Last Christmas. We may find they prefer something softer like White Christmas by Bing Crosby," Brown said. Thank you for answering this question science.
A "Great" White Christmas.
Don't let them get a hold of any lasers, that could be a bad combination.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
as the sharks bludgeon themselves on the sides of the tunnel, being unable to plug their ears as scientists incessently torture them with 90s remakes that completely lack christmas spirit.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
re: "Mod me up because I have a vagina and I advertise it through my username!"
Hmmm... "Anonymous Coward". Yes, kind of an obscure reference but, indeed, you are correct there. :^p
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Indeed, for those of us who suffered through the fads of the 1970's, there is a horrid piece of kitsch called "Santa Jaws", a parody of A Visit From Saint Nicholas, brought to you by the same source as the slightly more famous Mr. Jaws.
"Santa Jaws" is so (deservedly) obscure that it doesn't appear on YouTube nor are its lyrics available anywhere except here and only from memory, and only due to being unavailable anywhere else.
Yet, it appears to have finally had a purpose after all. :^p
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
The best guess I have is that they probably won't care about it at best, or they will just be somewhat annoyed by the noise.
Now, if it were something like Two-Fin Shakur or even Mariah Carp we might get a scientifically valid result.
Who the hell is funding this?
who says our tax dollars aren't being put to good use?
More interesting question would be the effect of Christmas songs on humans. More specifically, whether the endless playing of them in every store starting from at least a month before Christmas causes people to buy more crap. You'd think it would cause the stores must have researched that kind of stuff, but then every person I know regards them as an annoyance. Personally, I would go out of my way to shop at a store that doesn't play them if I could only find one.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
...what happens if they pipe the 'Jaws' movie theme music - see if they all shit themselves and get out of the water real fast.
I think we're gonna need a bigger grant...
Sharks with frickin' christmas tunes stuck in their heads...?
Agreed. And what's the purpose of that image? I'd say it was the most useless image I've seen on a Slashdot article, but that honor goes to the artificial Christmas tree on an article about a guy who made a pyramid looking thing out of old hard drives.
Half year or so the new idle was introduced - fine with me. Some stupid stories to waste time, nicely grouped together.
Then a few months ago now and then idle stories started making the front page. Acceptable, easy to filter using preferences.
But nowadays I see two, three of these idle type stories hit the front page every day! Now this stupid shark thing, masking as a science story. Appropriately tagged 'idle' already.
Please editors: keep idle type stories in the idle section, not in other sections, so we can filter them out if we like. And only real science stories in the science section. It's what those sections are made for, right?
test whether sharks enjoy listening to Christmas pop songs
No. They don't.
They enjoy lasers as christmas presents though...
If this isn't cruel animal testing I don't know what is.
Surely sharks will like "Santa Jaws". (mp3 here).
do sharks enjoy researchers?
The evil in the USA knows no bounds.
... welcome our new carol-loving, aquatic predatorial overlords.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You know, that was my first reaction also, but it might not be as dumb as it sounds. The summery says that someone showed fish recognizing melody. That is interesting. Not as interesting as a super massive black hole in the center of our galaxy, but interesting none the less. Now, consider the kind of funding that would be needed to do this study. They are not going out catching sharks and building huge aquariums with specialized facilities to do this study. They are piping Christmas music through existing speakers in an already functioning aquarium that likely is already doing other studies. Even the music is likely already pre-existing. The only costs to this study would be in keeping track of what music is playing (which would be playing anyways), logging the behavior of the sharks, which they are likely already doing, and reviewing the results when it is done.
From a non-marine biologists point of view, it would be interesting to know if the music agitates sharks. If I made only twice what I make now, I might consider making a TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION of 20 or 30 thousand dollars to an aquarium for this kind of research. It would be interesting, and I might come out financially ahead from it. From a marine biologist's point of view, I can only imagine that this is at least as interesting as I find my PC specs, or OS choice. It also could have honest to goodness practical applications. Today, sharks are likely subjected to Christmas music in aquariums anyplace that Christmas is largely celebrated. So, if the music is going to cause the animals stress, it would make sense to turn the PA system off in the aquariums.