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They found a live megamouth shark! (Or was it the megalodon?)

Francisco Miraval

In its unending and insatiable desire to attract and keep viewers, some TV channels that previously presented decent programs about science are now retorting to “productions” or “mockumentaries” where reality and fantasy are so intertwined it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.
Last week, for example, I watched a program about a group of scientist trying to videotape for the first time ever a live megamouth shark. This shark, as it is clear, has a big mouth, bigger than all other sharks. And it manages to remain undetected until 35 years ago. Scientists studied 50 dead megamouth sharks, but nobody ever recorded a live one.

Nobody did it, that is, until the final five minutes of the show I was watching, when, surprise, surprise, a megamouth shark appeared, as if the shark was Reading the script and somebody was prompting him to appear on the stage. Why, by the way, everything is always solved during the last five minutes of a TV series?

I must say I liked the idea of the discovery of a megamouth shark. After all, it is extremely interesting to know that a large, voracious animal could remain undetected to humans for millennia and until just three decades ago. What other big animals are still lurking undetected in the oceans?

I felt somebody was reading my mind, because the next program addressed that very same question, asking what if another shark, megalodon (literally, “big teeth”) were still alive and not extinct for millions of years, as scientists say?

The idea that supposedly extinct animals are still alive is nothing new. In fact, the discovery of the discovery of a live coelacanth en 1938 proved that sometimes “extinct” animals are still alive. And in 2005, the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, was rediscovered in Arkansas.  Some people even say that the famous Tasmanian tiger may still be alive.

But, what about megalodon?  The parody of a documentary about megalodon was so bad (it was more a funny horror movie) that it provided no answer.

Something, however, was clear. The alleged documentary about a supposedly alive megalodon was not a documentary at all. It was a “recreation” of what could eventually happen if an expedition is mounted to find a live megalodon and the megalodon is found. In other words, it was a just a fantastic tale.

And if this program was a fictitious story, we can safely assume the previous one was also a fictitious story. Perhaps neither megamouth nor megalodon really exists. Or perhaps both are real. Or perhaps one is real and the other one is not. It is impossible to know it just watching these allegedly “educational” programs, apparently more interested in providing entertaining that any piece of true information.

And if those programs are deceiving us, what other programs, series, books, and movies are also deceiving us? And why science needs mockumentaries to promote real research? Perhaps we need to find a live megabrain to finally get some real answers.

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