Who Bites More - Sharks, Or New Yorkers?

Are you more likely to be bitten by a shark, or a New Yorker? That was the question I found myself asking a week ago, after I saw a popular meme posted on Reddit. This 'fact' is undeniably funny, but is it true?

The short, and perhaps surprising answer is, yes.

After reading two studies conducted on this important subject, it is clear that New Yorkers do indeed bite people significantly more frequently than sharks. And as with so many statistics, the numbers are easy to find, but interpreting them isn't so simple.

Let's give it a go:

How Bitey Are Sharks?

Firstly, sharks get a lot of bad press. Contrary to popular perception, sharks really don’t bite that many people.

Last year, the International Shark Attack File reported only 69 unprovoked shark bites. For every unprovoked shark attack last year, there were:

9,000 new millionaires in America
28 deaths caused by lightning strikes
3.4 goose-aircraft collisions

On top of this, close to half of shark attacks happen to surfers - so if you’re totally uncool, your risk factor halves. Either way, sharks really aren’t that bitey to begin with.

New Yorkers, on the other hand...

How Bitey Are New Yorkers?

The best study I found on the topic of New Yorkers biting people is “An Epidemiological Study of the Human Bite”, published in 1977. During a truly turbulent time for the city, this study dives into human bite statistics from the year before, as recorded by the NYC Department of Health - and, oh boy, there’s a lot to go into.

Firstly, the study claims 892 human bites occurred in the Five Boroughs the previous year - a far cry from the 6,700 purported by the Reddit meme.

Then again, only 36 shark attacks occur in U.S. waters every year, according to the ISAF - so as a citywide average, New Yorkers bite 24.7 times more people than sharks do.

Ah, but I hear you say, “That was in 1976! They’d only just figured out VHS! What about more recently?” There is some newer data available - and we’ll get to that.

But, as it turns out, there are stranger things to be bitten by in the Big Apple.

Bitten By A What?

The 1977 study doesn’t just talk about human bites - it also mentions other animal bites.

Humans rank as the third biteyest animals in New York by number of incidents. First and second place goes to dogs and cats; no surprises there.

However, plenty of other animals are logged in the report. That same year, 3 New Yorkers got bitten by lions, 21 were bitten by monkeys, and 1 very unlucky person was bitten by a polar bear!

I assumed these would be newsworthy, but I found no writing from the time about any of these incidents — clearly, they found it very embarrassing.

The report also states that somebody, somehow, managed to get bitten by an anteater. I have no idea how one would go about achieving this. Frankly, anteaters look like they struggle with ants, let alone people — did this person stick a finger up its snout? What on earth happened?

Anyway, let’s turn the focus back to human bites.

The Bite Rate Doubled

Alarmingly, I discovered that the bite rate per person had doubled by 1985!

According to the epidemiologic study I mentioned earlier, a grand total of 892 human bites were recorded in 1976 — that means over 10 bites per 100,000 people on average, and about 2.4 bites a day. By 1985, that number had risen to 1,591 bites a year.

This increase coincides with a lower population of 7.1 million, making the bite rate that year closer to 22 per 100k people, or over double from the decade prior!

I initially made the assumption that the reason the bite rate was higher was a higher population — after all, a non-zero number of people are biters, so bringing in more people would inevitably bring more bites, right? Learning that the population actually went down from 1976 threw that theory out completely.

The authors of the 1977 study make a tenuous link between human bites and anti-social behaviour, and with almost 60% of human bites that year being linked to fights, it’s easy to see why. While it’s true that the number of aggravated assault cases reported is higher in 1985 than 1976, I’m not sure that completely explains the increase in bites.

My running theory is that three bitey films about Dracula released in 1979 are responsible. The premiering of Nosferatu the Vampyre, Love at First Bite, and Dracula at the turn of the decade must have set in motion a butterfly effect, causing two extra New Yorkers a day to be bitten years later. It’s the only explanation that fits...

For now, it remains a mystery. I hope they bring the numbers down, though, because I’d like to visit New York, but I need to chew it over first.