The bull shark story was a hoax– a recycled April Fool’s joke. I carefully added a total hoax to a bunch of actual true stories about bull sharks in rivers. It is now physically impossible for a bull shark to get that far up the Mississippi, unless they evolve some way to walk on land like walking catfish. There are now too many locks and dams on the river. They also would have to evolve internal thermoregulation like great whites and salmon sharks have. Even that water is too freaking cold for a shark of a primarily subtropical origin.
I think the bit I had in there about the bull sharks jumping Minnehaha Falls may have raised your suspicions that I was being a bit less than truthful. However, if you didn’t realize it was a joke, I apologize.
I did it yesterday because 1. It was my birthday. 2. I was bored. 3. I was laughing at how many people fell for the Montauk Monster conspiracy theories! So I thought I’d try my own using that recycled April Fool’s hoax.
You suck! :P That was all awesome! (I may be the only person ever who LIKES the idea of scary river sharks, since I’m smart enough not to swim in rivers that are murky, because even if there aren’t sharks, there are evil toe-eating snapping turtles) And the part about getting over locks during times of flood seems perfectly reasonable, given some of the evidence from elsewhere in the world.
Yes, they have. I don’t know if you watch River Monsters on Animal Planet, but there was a case of one jumping running the locks in Australia during a flood. It was an 8 footer, big enough to drag a horse under.
Yes, I was watching that. :P And I thought it was extremely cool. Yay sharks!
The segment on the alligator gars was filmed not too far from me, and I’m trying to track down exactly where, because it looked like a cool part of the river (the Trinity’s not very pretty overall) to go see.