The Great White shark used to be one of the most effective killing machines on the planet — or so we thought. Nowadays, the act of taking a selfie is proving far deadlier.
Just a year after the word was added to the dictionary, the selfie is claiming more lives than shark attacks, according to a report by Condé Nast Traveler.
There have been dozens of deaths related to tourists taking selfies, according to Condé Nast research, compared with just eight confirmed shark-related deaths this year through August. And that’s just the widely reported cases involving tourism — there are likely far more non-tourist-specific cases, such as people taking selfies and Snapchat videos while behind the wheel of a car.
There is now an entire Wikipedia page devoted to selfie-related injuries and deaths. The latter range from a 21-year-old Spanish man who was electrocuted in March 2014 after climbing on top of a train to take a selfie with friends, to a Japanese tourist who died earlier this month of injuries sustained by falling down a staircase while taking a selfie at the Taj Mahal.
Selfie photos taken too close to mama bears have also become a danger, even leading to the temporary shutdown of Colorado’s Waterton Canyon in August.
“We’ve actually seen people using selfie sticks to try and get as close to the bears as possible, sometimes within 10 feet of wild bears,” said Brandon Ransom, Denver Water’s manager of recreation, in a blogpost. “The current situation is not conducive for the safety of our visitors or the well-being of the wildlife.”
Even if selfies aren’t the cause of injury, there’s now apparently no shame in broadcasting injuries via selfie-cam after the fact. A 27-year-old Hawaiian man, for example, took a selfie video this week while being transported to a hospital after he was bitten by a tiger shark.
Perhaps everyone should heed the warning of this guy: