18 July 2025

On my birthday, I watched a Nat Geo Animal video about your surprising migration, Great White Sharks, into the cold waters of Canada. The migration raised new questions for scientists. A team of researchers tagged and tracked you using advanced technology to uncover your movement patterns and understand how you survive in extreme climates.

It turned out that you are capable of hunting in cold environments, provided that prey such as seals are available. Their presence can even serve as an indicator of your presence in the area. One of the researchers, Greg, looked incredibly excited every time he managed to tag one of you. His enthusiasm seemed to reflect the dedication and passion required to understand and protect your species.

I watched the video with Alice, Sophie, Cinderella, and Ms. Lynella. Afterwards, we talked about electroreception, the remarkable sense possessed by sharks. Apparently, there was once a man named Lorenzini who was deeply interested in anatomy. He dissected a ray and discovered strange structures within its body, including small, pouch-like organs resembling ancient Roman jars. They eventually became known as the Ampullae of Lorenzini.

In sharks like you, these structures are concentrated around the head and snout. They consist of tiny sensory canals that are extraordinarily sensitive to electrical fields. You can detect incredibly weak electrical signals, far weaker than anything I could consciously perceive from my phone.

When I brought up the hunting of sharks for their fins, with their bodies discarded simply because of myths about their supposed medicinal properties, Ms. Lynella said:

“Sharks have extraordinary immune systems, precise electroreception, and elegant hunting adaptations. Yet there is one thing they do not have: the ability to fight global markets and human propaganda.”

Sophie added:

“Imagine how humiliating it would be for a species that has survived and adapted for hundreds of millions of years to disappear because of the intervention of a much younger species on Earth: humans.”

Alice, meanwhile, wrote a prose piece about you:

Sharks do not care about the labels humans give them in popular media. They know their energy is too precious to waste on such things. Sharks keep swimming, watching their prey, even as millions more are hunted every year. They do not declare war.

Cinderella, meanwhile, simply listened. Perhaps her thoughts were occupied with something more important, such as meeting her prince.

For a moment, I wanted to ask you, as apex predators of the ocean, “Why don’t you declare war on the land?”

But perhaps, as Alice said, you are too important to the ecosystem to waste your time thinking about something as trivial as humans.

Sometimes, I feel a little like you.

I do not have electroreception, of course, but my brain seems capable of detecting cynical looks, glances that feel judgemental, or even laughter that seems directed at me. Its range extends only as far as my eyes can see. Yet it is nowhere near as accurate as your sensory system.

The indicators may be obvious to you, but they are not always obvious to me.

The ability to recognise people who might hurt me is part of perception. It emerges from vigilance, from a mind constantly watching its surroundings. But perception is not always accurate.

Ms. Lynella once told me:

“Sometimes, humans feel as though every light around them is shining directly upon them as individuals. As though someone else’s laughter has a direction, and that direction somehow penetrates the brain.

But often, the laughter is simply a coincidence.

And the human brain, that little author of internal drama, takes it, adds a narrative, and plays it again like an old theatre piece that once caused pain.”

So when I see a couple laughing and assume they are laughing at me, I tell myself:

“I know. It is only my own brain laughing at itself.”

Your species also tends to be solitary. My brain, meanwhile, was built for life among a group, yet I often find myself alone. I try to survive on my own whenever I can.

And even when there is someone willing to help me, I often refuse to admit that I need it.

So, as fellow experienced loners…

Would you form a small school with me, at least in my imagination?

Would you be my friends?