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Here, sharky-sharky-shark (GNW 22/6/09: Strange But True)

Sharks at British aquariums are being trained to feed from keepers and even roll over and have their tummies tickled. Aww! If you’re lucky, you can feel the remains of the last shark-keeper that tried that trick.

The plan is to make the sharks so well trained that they’ll happily jump in the batter themselves.

They will be taught a variety of commands, beginning with “Don’t Eat Me”.

As well as waiting their turn, the sharks will also be trained to speak when spoken to, and close their mouth when they tear you limb from limb.

Sharks will be given signals with coloured boards and sounds, and will swim towards the keeper, who’s holding what they call a “target stick”, but is actually the last keeper’s arm.

The brightest sharks should respond to commands within three months. The aquarium figures they should go through five or six keepers at most.

It’s like we’ve always suspected – the fishy sharks are actually more intelligent than the human ones.

The sharks will be trained just like dogs. And, just like dogs, they will also go on the occasional blood-fuelled killing spree.

The sharks will be trained just like dogs. Giant scary dogs who live in the water, have row upon row of deadly serrated teeth, and will one day tear us apart in a blood-thirsty frenzy of destructive thrashing malevolence. / and who could tear us apart in a second like a flappy rag-doll made of meat and stuffed with intestines.

But the sharks are smarter than we think – they’re actually training US. And once our guard is down and we’re happily splashing about with them in the water… THEN it’s lunchtime.

The sharks will be trained using coloured boards and sounds, similar to what Ivan Pavlov did with dogs. They’ve previously tried training sharks using Pavlov’s techniques, but the bell didn’t work too well underwater.

Great, now we don’t just have to worry about blood in the water, but having a surfboard the colour of lunch.

Training sharks when meals are by the use of coloured boards is not necessarily great news for surfers.

The brightest sharks should respond to commands within three months, although you’ve got to watch out for the ones with ADHD. / watch out for the slow learners.

Though you’ll have to be extra careful in the ocean. That shark may just be playing dead.

Next, they’re planning on training piranhas, stonefish, and Ivan Milat.

If only it was that easy to train the Cronulla Sharks.

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

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