The great white shark probably is the most feared of all ocean animals. It gained that scary reputation 50 years ago thanks to a blockbuster movie: Jaws. The movie premiered on June 20th, 1975, and quickly became the all-time box office champion. It scared a lot of people out of the water—and set off a frenzy of shark killings. People killed thousands of them, and even competed in shark-hunting tournaments.

Great whites can be fearsome. They’re responsible for more human deaths than any other species of shark. In fact, a series of attacks along the New Jersey coast in 1916 was one of the inspirations for the novel upon which the movie was based.

But the sharks aren’t nearly as nasty as portrayed on screen. The movie version was much bigger than any real great white ever seen. And it was stronger and more tenacious.

Biologists say that great whites don’t pursue humans. Instead, a shark may attack because it confuses a person or surfboard with a seal, one of its favorite meals.

Great whites don’t have especially good eyesight, and they probably are color blind. So they look for dark silhouettes on the surface contrasted with the bright sky above. And scientists recently suggested a way to use that trait to keep the sharks from attacking. Researchers towed seal decoys behind a boat in shark-infested waters. And they found that adding stripes of bright lights to the underside of a decoy kept the sharks at bay—making it safer to get back in the water.

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