Overview

• The Instagram clip posted two days ago by user ‘ziad_zebra’ shows marine biologist Elise Gentry hugging and kissing a juvenile great white shark off Tahiti.
• Gentry says the three-year Predictive Reciprocity Conditioning experiment began in 2018 to build a non-threatening pattern that led the shark, named Dante, to trust her.
• According to her caption, by month 21 Dante swam directly to her and by month 30 allowed her to touch his snout without food, spears or cages.
• OceanX and the BlueZone Institute reportedly reviewed her footage and noted similar bonding behaviors in three other great whites from the same region.
• Observers and experts have questioned whether the footage is genuine or AI-generated, and no independent verification of the experiment has been published.