Why it Sucks To Be Born As a Greenland Shark

You hatch inside your mother, fully formed and already moving before you ever touch the ocean. A short while later, she releases you and nine others into the deep. And the moment you're out, you begin to drift apart, each of you floating in your own direction.

Once the last one is gone, your mother turns and leaves without even pausing or looking back to see if you're all okay. The water is close to freezing, but your body stays warm. You're not built like other fish.

There are chemicals in your skin that stop the cold from breaking you down. You move slowly through the dark. Your body isn't built for speed, and there's nothing around that pushes you to go faster.

You're in no danger, but you're not safe either. You exist somewhere in between, and that's where you'll stay. For a long time, nothing around you moves.

You hold your place in the water, and the world around you acts like you're not even there. Your siblings are no longer in sight. And even though you remember their shapes beside you, there's no instinct that tells you to follow.

Eventually, something larger drifts overhead, and without thinking, you stop moving. It doesn't turn or react, and soon it disappears into the dark like it was never there. You wait a little longer just to be sure nothing else is coming.

Then you start moving again. Not toward anything, just away from where you were. You haven't eaten yet, but down here, something always dies eventually.

You're a few weeks old now, drifting lower into the water until the surface is far above you and the light no longer reaches. You stay around 500 m deep, where almost nothing moves quickly and almost nothing wastes energy. Your body temperature is close to freezing, and your metabolism is slower than almost any other predator on the planet.

You don't burn fuel quickly. You don't need constant meals. You can go months without eating if you have to, and nothing inside you will panic.

Eventually, you find something. A small fish already dead, drifting downward through the water in a slow spiral. It's soft and too old for anything living near the surface to bother with anymore.

You move toward it, jaws slightly open, ready to bite. Then you feel it, a low movement beside you. It's another shark, smaller than you, but not by much.

It's one of your siblings, though you don't recognize it. You drift slightly closer, and so do they. The fish spins between you both, and you match angles, silently shadowing each other.

Then you both lunge. Your heads clash midwater, not hard enough to injure, but enough to knock each other off course. The fish spins away, carried by the current, and by the time you recover, it's already disappeared into the dark.

The other shark drifts back into the merc without hesitation. So do you. Down here, this is how it works.

Nothing stays alive for long, and not everything dead gets eaten. You haven't seen anything bigger than you yet, but eventually something will show up that wants the same meal. You're a couple of months old now, and something has changed.

Small crustaceans have attached themselves to your eyes, latching on tightly and refusing to let go. They don't kill you, but they've blocked your vision almost completely. The longer they stay, the worse it gets, and eventually you go blind.

But that doesn't matter. You don't need your eyes to find food. You've never relied on movement or light to track anything down.

Your sense of smell is enough to pull you across the seafloor, and your skin picks up faint electrical signals from nearby animals when they come close. Then one day, while you're swimming next to the seafloor looking for food, something shifts. A strange vibration moves through the water.

You turn toward it, not because you're hunting, but because it doesn't match anything you've sensed before. It doesn't glide like a fish, and it doesn't stalk like a predator. It's metal.

At first, it drifts slowly past. You stay still, tracking the buzz as it fades into the distance. Then it turns.

The water around you begins to move, not like a current. It's more focused and more directed. It's following you.

You shift your path, but the pressure behind you stays constant, and the hum grows even louder. You sink a little deeper, but the thing mirrors you. It doesn't breathe, and it doesn't pulse, but it moves like it's watching you.

You angle downward, pushing yourself into thicker water. And after a long moment, the hum begins to fade again. The pressure softens, and then the sound disperses.

You don't know what it was, but it didn't feel like prey. And it didn't feel like something that should be here. Skip forward a bit, and you're a couple of years old now.

You've grown only a few centimeters, just one per year, because that's the pace your body moves at. One day, a new scent reaches you. It's thick, unfamiliar, and far stronger than anything you've detected before.

You follow it slowly, not out of hunger, but because it stands out in a way that's impossible to ignore. The current moves around you, carrying pieces of the smell in different directions, but they all point the same way. The scent gets stronger the closer you get, and eventually a shape starts to form ahead of you.

It's not anything you've seen before. Bloated, heavy, and sinking slowly. The body turns in the current as it falls.

You don't know what a moose is, but that's what this is now. Smaller scavengers are already there, clustered along the edges. They've started feeding, but none of them are large enough to take more than the surface.

As you move closer, they scatter without resistance. You open your jaws and sink your teeth into the thickest part of the body. The flesh is tougher than fish, but it gives way eventually, and you drift backward to swallow before circling again.

Then something wraps around your tail. It's fast, and it moves without warning. A sharp pain follows as something digs into your flesh.

Not a bite, but a stab. You twist violently, and the grip loosens. You catch a glimpse of it as it retreats.

It's a shape with arms and no bones, a flash of long tentacles, and a dark waiting eye. It's a squid. It doesn't chase you.

It curls back around the carcass and disappears behind the body. You back away slowly, keeping the wound on your side, away from the current. You don't fight back.

You sink lower into the dark and keep moving. You don't know what else might fall from the surface. But next time, you will make sure that no one steals it from you.

You're 50 years old now. You've grown half a meter since birth, and your body has thickened with time. A strong scent drifts through the water, and you follow it down.

It gets heavier with every meter until eventually the source comes into view. It's a sperm whale lying on the seafloor with its mouth slightly open. You watch it for a while, slowly circling around it.

It doesn't move, so you approach from below, keeping your pace steady. The body is large enough to feed you for days, and there's no sign that anything else has touched it yet. You reach the lower side of the belly and bite down.

The skin resists at first, but tur when your teeth lock and twist. You pull free a chunk of soft flesh and drift back to swallow, already turning to take another. Then the body moves.

The tail lifts slightly and drops again, while a faint contraction moves through the muscles beneath the skin. The mouth closes slowly and its eyes open. It's not dead.

It was just sleeping. You turn to leave, but it's already too late. The whale moves, turning through the water with enough force to shift the current around you.

The tail swings in a wide arc and strikes your side. And although the impact doesn't break anything, it sends your body flying across the seafloor. You correct your position, but the whale is already preparing to strike again.

And this time, you see the tail cut across just behind your head. The force alone disrupts the water around your body and drags you sideways again. You don't wait for a third strike.

You angle upward and begin to ascend, pushing yourself into the higher layer of current. Your body is heavy and it moves slowly, but it moves consistently. The whale follows for a couple of minutes, but after a while, the movement behind you stops.

The pain settles in gradually, tracing a long line across your side that will stay with you for a long time. You don't stop because there's nothing to wait for. You manage to survive this time, but next time you'll have to be more careful.

You're 150 years old now, and your body has finally reached maturity. You are ready to reproduce. You keep drifting forward through the cold just as you always have and nothing in your path suggests that anything will be different.

Then a new signal brushes against your skin. It's a soft pattern of electrical pulses that moves through the current. You follow it without hesitation because something in your body responds before anything else can.

Eventually, you detect movement ahead. It's slow and follows no clear direction. It's another Greenland shark, the first you've encountered in a hundred years.

It doesn't acknowledge you, and it doesn't move away. It just continues through the water, keeping its own pace. not faster than you and not slower either.

You stay beside it for a while, then you take your chance and mate. The process is simple and short. And once it's done, the shark in front of you begins to drift away.

You don't follow it. The connection is over, and there is no reason to stay near each other. You turn in the opposite direction and continue forward through the current.

There will be no offspring nearby and no sign of what took place. You don't know when you'll encounter another of your kind again, but somewhere, one of them will carry what you've left behind. Skip forward a bit, and you're 250 years old.

Now, while you're swimming, as usual, something catches your attention. You detect a scent. It cuts cleanly through the current, thick with fresh blood.

You shift your path and begin to close in, letting the trail guide you downward through the colder layer. The body of a dead seal appears a few minutes later. Some of the tissue is torn, but it hasn't been picked over yet.

A sixkill shark is already circling, smaller than you, but much faster. Its turns are tight and sharp, cutting closer with each pass. You adjust your angle and approach the other side of the carcass, staying clear and aiming for the softest part of the exposed muscle.

You don't look at the sixkill and you don't change direction, but it moves in anyway. Its strike is sudden. Jaws open, body twisting sideways.

It tears across your side and veers off before you react. The cut is deep enough to throw off your balance, and your body tilts as you pull away from the kill. But this time, you strike back.

As it turns for a second pass, you twist and lunge. Your jaws catch its side just behind the gills. Your teeth sink in and tear a long, ragged wound as it thrashes free.

It bolts into the dark, trailing a thick line of blood behind it. You don't chase it. You're still bleeding.

and the wound on your side hurts with every movement. You swim down into deeper water, away from the feeding zone and into a colder, thicker space. You settle between two slabs of rock and wait.

The bleeding slows over several hours. You stay there until the wound is mostly healed and your movement feels steady again. When you leave, you don't return to the kill.

This wound will close, but the next one could go deeper. You're 400 years old now, and the water feels the same as it always has. You follow a familiar current along the seafloor, keeping steady as the flow begins to shift slightly.

Something ahead is moving fast enough to disturb the pattern, but not enough to trigger alarm. You change your path slightly and continue forward. Then the pressure changes.

The first strike hits from below and lifts your body just enough to tilt you sideways. Before you adjust, a second impact spins you over and leaves you inverted. You try to correct your position, but the response never comes.

The orientation disables your movement, and the water begins pulling at you from every side. Another hit drives into your side, followed by a deep bite that opens your underside. You try to move again, but nothing happens.

More bodies close in from different angles. Their movements are faster than anything you've encountered before. One takes your pectoral fin.

Another clamps across your jaw and pulls. Your skin splits. Blood spreads through the water, but your body no longer reacts.

You don't struggle, just slowly progress towards stillness. The killer whales leave as quickly as they arrived. They take what they need and leave the rest to sink.

After four centuries of motion, feeding, and quiet survival, your body stops where the current drops it. It won't be buried and it won't be remembered, but others will pass by eventually and they'll take their share, too. Life as a Greenland shark might be rough, but there's another animal out there that has it way worse.

Trust me, it's wild. Check out the video and see for yourself.