Do Sharks Have a Sixth Sense?
Hammerhead sharks by the hundreds swirl around Peter Klimley. This sounds like a nightmare with teeth, but for the adventurer and scientist, it’s just another swim with his favorite animal. Klimley, a marine biologist at the University of California, Davis, has spent many hours in the water with these sharks—some more than four meters long. Although hammerheads have a “man-eater” reputation, they’ve never harmed him. “I once wanted to get a hammerhead on the research boat, so I lassoed it by the tail,” says Klimley. “I was afraid it would turn around and bite me, but it just swam faster.” As a teenager, Klimley raised tropical fish. He became interested in sharks as a college student. “There was something romantic about sharks,” he says. “It was my dream to study sharks in the water. I believe that if you want to understand an animal, you have to enter its environment.” Scalloped hammerheads are one of the largest of the nine species of hammerheads. As a young scientist, Klimley heard
