Hapless jaws

Back in my undergraduate days, as a mini-Shakespeare buff, I used to carry a very negative image of dogs in my mind.

The Renaissance didn't think too highly of the dog: the same hypothetical dog that would be faithful to a noble person, would be faithful to an abominable villain. 

This meant that a canine has no ability to discern between good and evil, an unbearable lack that the Renaissance mind couldn't take kindly to. 

Today, the dog is a repository of many of the cherished human virtues like loyalty, bravery, etc. It's the shark that could be the 21st century's equivalent of the 16th century dog (though the dog was never considered vicious like the shark is).

As Theo Tait points out in his review of Demon Fish: Travels through the Hidden World of Sharks by Juliet Eilperin, the shark is a much-reviled animal because of "the creatures’ failure to behave in a sympathetic, anthropomorphically pleasing fashion." 

(Indeed, I recall a scene from Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking: Didion has a nightmare of her daughter being attacked by sharks. It foreshadows the ailing daughter's death).

Eilpern's book works to dispel the American myth of sharks as monstrous carnivores. It also tells us that the shark population is shrinking globally. 

The Chinese consumption of shark fin soup has gone up phenomenally, and unlike the cod, herring and the tuna, shark fisheries are of negligible economic value, so little effort is made to protect stocks.