Can Sharks Smell Blood from a Mile Away? Plus: Dual-Uterus Sharks and How Interstellar Travel Will Change Language
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2020
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about whether sharks can really smell a drop of blood from a mile away; how some sharks give birth from two uteruses (and why that’s not even the weirdest part); and the complicated way interstellar travel can mess with language.
Can sharks really smell a drop of blood from a mile away? by Grant Currin
- Shark Smell Myth Found Fishy. (2013, July 10). Inside Science. https://www.insidescience.org/news/shark-smell-myth-found-fishy
- Meredith, T. L., & Kajiura, S. M. (2010). Olfactory morphology and physiology of elasmobranchs. Journal of Experimental Biology, 213(20), 3449–3456. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.045849
- Villazon, L. (2019). How do sharks smell blood underwater? BBC Science Focus Magazine; BBC Science Focus Magazine. https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-do-sharks-smell-blood-underwater/
Some sharks give live birth from two uteruses -- and that's not the weirdest part by Grant Currin
- Shark Smell Myth Found Fishy. (2013, July 10). Inside Science. https://www.insidescience.org/news/shark-smell-myth-found-fishy
- Meredith, T. L., & Kajiura, S. M. (2010). Olfactory morphology and physiology of elasmobranchs. Journal of Experimental Biology, 213(20), 3449–3456. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.045849
- Villazon, L. (2019). How do sharks smell blood underwater? BBC Science Focus Magazine; BBC Science Focus Magazine. https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-do-sharks-smell-blood-underwater/
The unintelligible languages of interstellar travel by Cameron Duke
- Lost in Space or Translation? (2020, June 30). The University of Kansas. http://news.ku.edu/2020/06/30/without-care-lost-space-could-mean-lost-translation
- McKenzie, A., & Punske, J. (2020). Language Development During Interstellar Travel. Acta Futura, 12, 123–132. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3747353
- Williams, M. (2020, July 8). Languages Will Change Significantly on Interstellar Flights. Universe Today. https://www.universetoday.com/146889/languages-will-change-significantly-on-interstellar-flights/
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/can-sharks-smell-blood-from-a-mile-away-plus-dual-uterus-sharks-and-how-interstellar-travel-will-change-language
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.8 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. And it's Shark Week. |
| 0:10.8 | To celebrate today you'll learn about whether sharks can really smell a drop of blood from |
| 0:16.3 | a mile away and how some sharks give birth from more than one uterus, which, spoiler alert, isn't even the weirdest part. |
| 0:25.0 | Then we'll head from the sea to the sky and learn about the complicated way |
| 0:28.8 | interstellar travel can mess with language. |
| 0:32.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:35.0 | Legend has it that sharks aren't just speed, agility, and teeth. |
| 0:40.0 | It's said that they're also super-smellers who can smell a single drop of blood in the water from a mile away. |
| 0:47.0 | But that turns out to be a myth. |
| 0:51.0 | In reality, sharks are no better than your typical fish when it comes to olfaction. |
| 0:56.0 | Let's sniff out this smelly shark myth. |
| 1:00.0 | There are a few reasons this rumor has proven so persistent, and one of them comes from semi-scientific observation. |
| 1:07.5 | See, unlike us, sharks use separate body parts for breathing and for smell. |
| 1:13.0 | Breathing, of course, happens in the gills. |
| 1:16.0 | Smell happens in a chamber that's connected to the outside world by two nostrils, |
| 1:21.0 | or nares, on the front of a shark's face. |
| 1:24.4 | A shark's nasal chamber contains a huge amount of tissue with a ton of surface area, |
| 1:29.7 | way more than other fish. |
| 1:31.8 | For a long time, scientists thought all that tissue |
| 1:34.4 | equaled an extremely acute sense of smell. Researchers put that idea to the |
| 1:39.4 | test in 2010 with an experiment into how well sharks and their close relatives could actually smell. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Warner Bros. Discovery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Warner Bros. Discovery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.