orcas are awesome, to me, because they showcase cooperation, intelligence, and success unheard of in the animal kingdom. other than humans poisoning them, killing off and poisoning their food supplies, and hunting them, they have no predators or anything preventing their success. they are truly amazing.
i would even argue that they don't "fight" great whites. orcas are faster, larger, and significantly more intelligent than great white sharks. it seems it is an easy enough kill for the pods that know how to hunt them. in fact, great whites off the coast of south africa have been known to leave the area when orcas arrive. that's right: great whites are seemingly afraid of orcas.
it is sad to me humans don't understand them more and still capture and enslave them for entertainment. we also are wreaking havoc in their ecosystems and food sources. they showcase intelligence i am not aware of in any other animal besides humans.
for example, there is a technique they use such that they trick prey that they are leaving. normally, mammal hunting orcas stop vocalizing when hunting. so by leaving the area and vocalizing after an unsuccessful hunt, they relax their prey by signaling they've given up. however, they have communicated to each other to leave a single orca behind that stays silent to catch the prey once it relaxes. then the rest of the pod comes back to share.
Holy crap - that's totally what happened. Fascinating...
"[Killer whale nicknamed] Old Tom's role was commonly to alert the human whalers to the presence of a baleen whale in the bay by breaching or tailslapping at the mouth of the Kiah River, which is one of the smallest rivers... This role endeared him to the whalers and led to the idea that he was “leader of the pack,” although such a role was more likely taken by a female (as is typical among killer whales)".
Too bad the humans fucked it up by breaking the deal:
>Old Tom forced a small whale to the surface, where Davidson harpooned it.[1] Because he wanted to get off the water before a storm arrived, Logan attempted to bring the carcass ashore without Old Tom eating the tongue and lips.[9] Old Tom apparently grabbed the tow rope in his mouth and lost some teeth in the struggle,[7] with Brooks recounting that Logan said "Oh God, what have I done?" when he realised that Old Tom had lost teeth.[1]
>When Old Tom's corpse washed ashore in 1930, the mouth had abscesses from missing teeth and he may have died of starvation.[7][9][1]
it really sickens me how much pain humans bring to the world through selfishness. i had heard of the cooperation story and old tom before, but not the conditions of this particular incident and his death. it seems the orcas in his pod disappeared after being hunted by whalers soon after, according to the wiki article.
Not to downplay their intelligence or hunting abilities, but orca weigh more than five times as much as great white sharks. You wouldn’t really say “that’s right: domestic cats are seemingly afraid of wolves.”
Not only do Orcas not "fight" great whites, but they have learned how to use tonic immobility[1] to get sharks (and sting rays[3]) into a state of complete paralysis before the rest of the pod rips them to shreds and they all feast on the shark. Sharks have one trick against the Orcas, and that is they can dive much much deeper than the whales, and stay under forever. However, a pod of Orcas will force a shark to stay near the surface to tire him out before flipping him upside down to snack on[2].
I love killer whales. I also love that its called a "Type D"
Sounds like a different spec setting for "killer"
I wonder, as killer whales are dolphins, if this may be a porpoise/dophin/killer-whale derivative?
I also wonder if the shape of the head, being more rounded, has to do with its sonar capabilities. Perhaps associated with the range, or the spread of its ability to detect/stun critters with sonar.
"Killer whale" is a mistranslated. Nobody ever really thought of them as whales. In english, "killer whale" means a whale that is a killer. French and english swap words and this moved from french to english without the swap. The proper translation should have been "Killer of whales" or "whale killer", the thing that kills whales.
This seems like a folk etymology, and a dubious one at that. A quick investigation of support turns up a Wikipedia article that's cited to an about.com post that's cited back to the Wikipedia article (where they claim a Spanish etymology), and the Spanish-language article on the topic is cited back to the same About.com post. :P
that's awesome. thanks for sharing that. orcas and whales have some complex relationships. i have seen some research suggesting that humpback whales have begun interrupting orca hunts, even when they're hunting other species and not necessarily humpback whales.
at the end of the story you linked, it seems the orcas did their wave dashing technique on the boat. this has been filmed with the bbc crew having it done to them as well. the orcas had just finished off a seal i believe, and did the same technique with the filmers in the boat.
My understanding is that we think Orcas are speciating already with some focusing on hunting seals and others hunting salmon and they don't have overlapping hunting grounds.
Additionally they seem to differentiate and prefer their 'own' type so we might be actually witnessing a new species there in and of itself.
orcas definitely have culture, but these type d really look quite different from other orcas. in an article i read about these type d orcas, it mentioned that scientists have considered before whether the other types should be separate species or not. to my knowledge, they do not interbreed between types, and if they do or can, it is rare. there are other orca types that are still poorly understood, including the offshore orcas in the pacific northwest.
It’s my understanding there has never been a reported killing of a human by Orcas and that they possess a very interesting and not entirely understood brain.
Did my quick research. Actually I was wrong. Mosasaurus lived in a different era and adult Megalodon would probably be larger, so looks like Megalodon had no real threats.
i would even argue that they don't "fight" great whites. orcas are faster, larger, and significantly more intelligent than great white sharks. it seems it is an easy enough kill for the pods that know how to hunt them. in fact, great whites off the coast of south africa have been known to leave the area when orcas arrive. that's right: great whites are seemingly afraid of orcas.
it is sad to me humans don't understand them more and still capture and enslave them for entertainment. we also are wreaking havoc in their ecosystems and food sources. they showcase intelligence i am not aware of in any other animal besides humans.
for example, there is a technique they use such that they trick prey that they are leaving. normally, mammal hunting orcas stop vocalizing when hunting. so by leaving the area and vocalizing after an unsuccessful hunt, they relax their prey by signaling they've given up. however, they have communicated to each other to leave a single orca behind that stays silent to catch the prey once it relaxes. then the rest of the pod comes back to share.