A former NASA employee tried to test the myth of the drop of blood and sharks

>> that sharks can smell blood miles away is a popular movie cliché/vecstock

Marc Rober, a former NASA engineer and now a YouTube blogger, marked Shark Week by testing whether sharks can smell a drop of blood in the water . Thus, he decided to test the popular myth.

First, Robert pumped various liquids – seawater, fish oil, urine and cow's blood – into the ocean water of the Bahamas to make sure that the sharks really preferred the smell of blood. At first, none of the liquids caught the attention of the sharks, but after about 20 minutes, the sharks began to notice the blood, writes News Week.

With about 15 minutes left on the hour mark, the sharks began to follow the trail of blood before turning away when they realized he had only led them to the surfboard. In the end, four sharks tested the fish oil, none were interested in urine or seawater, and 41 sharks were interested in blood.

Robert continued the experiment and, in addition to himself, recruited several other people on the boat, who passed own blood to see if sharks like human blood as much as cow blood.

The myth of a shark and a few drops of blood destroyed: watch the video

One surfboard pumped seawater into the ocean for control, another pumped human blood rapidly, and the third pumped slowly. After another hour, neither the seawater nor the surfboard, which was slowly pumping out blood, interested any shark. Neither shark was interested in the fact that the surfboard was rapidly pumping blood into the water.

This is far from a perfect experiment, but I think it's safe to say that if out in the water, which are infested with sharks, no sharks will show up to test 15 drops of human blood a minute, so you'll probably be fine if you get a little scratch,
said Robert.

Robert didn't the first person to experiment with sharks and blood. More than 10 years ago, MythBusters conducted a test. In this experiment, Adam Savage and Jamie Heineman released fish blood for the first time and found that sharks were attracted to it.

However, when they pricked their finger and released human blood into the water, they found that the lemon shark did not of particular interest to her.

So it seems that the clichéd shark myth that an ocean predator can smell a drop of blood in an Olympic-sized pool has been proven time and time again that it just a myth.