INQUISITR.COM / Health & Lifestyle

Shark Loving Uncle Builds ‘Jaws’ Themed Crib

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 07:03 PST, Jan 4, 2015

Michael Joseph Melaccio’s uncle, enamored with the movie Jaws, took it upon himself to fashion a crib for his nephew, featuring the film’s iconic shark and recreating one of its most famous scenes.

Joseph Reginella decided to build the unusual crib for his 2-month-old nephew because of his love of the film, according to Metro. The crib recreates the climactic scene of Jaws, in which the great white shark that had terrorized Amity Island turned on Quint’s boat, destroying the vessel and devouring the angler in the process.

Michael's uncle decided to build the crib for his nephew because of his love of the movie Jaws.
Two-month-old Michael Joseph Melaccio smiles even as a large white shark looms over him in his Jaws themed crib.

The baby reclines on the after deck of the boat, as a large white shark rises around his feet, seemingly ready to bite him in half. Michael’s dad, Mark Melaccio, helped the child’s uncle build the crib, according to the Mirror.

“I’ve been waiting to put this kid in here for months!” Reginella wrote on Facebook.

A major hit when it was released in 1975, Jaws adapted a novel by Peter Benchley about a rogue great white shark that terrorized a small beachside community. The film has garnered criticism from scientific circles over the years, as the Inquisitr recently noted, for its propagation of rogue shark theories, which posit a shark that has attacked a human is more likely to do so in the future. The theory was first advanced in 1958’s Shark Attack by Victor Coppleson, and is not widely accepted in scientific circles.

Conservationists and shark researchers point out that the cultural significance of Jaws impacts current policies for dealing with great whites, most notably in Western Australia. Aggressive catch-and-kill orders have been implemented at times against white sharks in the region, prompting assertions that the government’s policies toward the endangered predators are driven more by the outdated theories that gave birth to Jaws than by widely accepted understanding of shark behavior.

Reginella’s shark-themed crib has already found a number of fans online, including rapper Example, who posted a photo of it to his Instagram account and noted his love of Jaws, according to the Daily Mail.

[Images: Mark Melaccio/Facebook via Metro]

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