Orcas have learned how to drown great white sharks | Hacker News Reader

Orcas have learned how to drown great white sharks

theguardian.com

404 points_lbaq102 comments

Despite being a very intelligent apex predator with a diverse diet[1], orcas apparently have never killed a human in the wild before in recorded history, and there is only one recorded case of an orca even biting a human[2]. Of course fatal attacks by captive orcas are well known.

Still, orcas are magnificent animals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Feeding

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale_attacks_on_humans

Put anybody in a tiny tank for long enough and they will certainly go crazy.

Proximity would go a very long way to explaining this or should we just jump to your implied conclusion?

Lies, damned lies and statistics...

Given that there have been multiple non-damaging encounters between wild Orcas and humans, and there have been instances of Orcas preying on nonhuman terrestrial animals, it is very likely that they do not have an interest in attacking humans in the wild.

As to whether captive Orca attacks are due to more aggression towards humans specifically or are simply the result of the high numbers of encounters with humans, I doubt there is sufficient data to ascertain.

Makes you think about how dangerous it would be to even release captive orcas. They may actually be capable of hating our guts and ideas have a way of spreading.

Some human beings that live near the ocean do go in the water.

Here are some more facts:

Great white sharks

world population: <3,500 [1]

fatal attacks on humans from 1990-2013: 35 [2]

Orcas

world population: >50,000[3]

fatal attacks on humans in the wild since the beginning of recorded history: apparently zero

Here are some bonus videos of people swimming with orcas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3mDXF3bcE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNtbaQyJx-0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErCfpYYuWuo

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/19/great-wh...

[2] https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fish/isaf/contributing-fac...

[3] http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/15421/0

Great White Sharks hunt seals near shore. The seals, in turn, hunt fish that often finds them going to sandy beaches where rivers meet the ocean. Humans like to swim and surf on these beaches. This forces contact between humans and the sharks.

Are there similar pressures to force Orca-human interactions?

> Great White Sharks hunt seals near shore.

Orcas do that too.

Are Oraca commonly found in water that won't cause hypothermia (eg death or unconsciousness) in less than an hour?

That would be warmer 50F==10C. Anecdotally, I have only seen or heard of people seeing Orca in the PNW and Arctic where swimming without a wet/dry suit is not only uncomfortable, but deadly.

Great White shark populations OTOH are concentrated in some of the most popular and temperate swimming areas in the world. Certainly, they are everywhere I have ever been swimming/diving.

http://voices.nationalgeographic.org/files/2013/02/1104_0729...

Orcas do have large populations near Antartica, Norway, and Alaska, but they also have large populations along the American West Coast, Mexico, and Australia. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility has some good maps of observation recordings around the world for these two species.

Orcas - https://www.gbif.org/species/2440483

Great white sharks - https://www.gbif.org/species/2420694

Good question. But according to this map[1] there should be plenty of beaches where orcas and humans might encounter each other.

Given that orcas are able to learn how to drown white sharks, and catch birds by baiting with fish, couldn’t it just be that they have learned not to hunt humans, as they’ve experienced retaliation in the past? I’m pretty sure pre-historic humans would somehow retaliate if an orca grabbed a child from the beach and, because of that, it would make sense if orcas have simply learned not to do this.

[1] https://dailyzooniverse.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/killerwh...

There is a surf spot in Morocco (Killers) named for the Orcas spotted there. They apparently show up periodically. Water is plenty warm.

orcas, with humans, are one of the most widely distributed mammals. they live nearly everywhere.

Yes, orcas also hunt seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals that live on beaches. Orcas will even beach themselves in order to hunt these. And they've even been observed in freshwater rivers [1].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtF3FPyRVIw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks40worW_gQ

https://youtu.be/HY-mefETVZ8?t=3m44s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkZKM47igpA

[1] http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=84

Why though ? Why wouldn't orcas prey on humans when the occasion present itself ?

Exactly. I have no idea. It would make sense for a large, capable predator to try out eating a human, but they just don't. Maybe humans don't have enough fat on them to be appealing? ...but orcas also eat birds, which don't have a lot of fat. Maybe because orcas are intelligent collaborative hunters, they have instincts not to eat other intelligent species like humans? ...but orcas also eat dolphins, which are similarly intelligent hunters.

I would also expect any large predator to spontaneously act aggressive at times, but this very rarely happens. Or at some point I would expect it to make a mistake and kill a human even though it doesn't actually want to eat him/her, but this has apparently never happened.

I find it all very interesting, but I'm at a loss to explain it.

Orcas seem to have fairly specialised diets -- there's different subspecies, each of which eats something different.

https://seaworld.org/animal-info/animal-infobooks/killer-wha...

>Type A whales eat mostly Antarctic minke whales and have also been observed hunting southern elephant seals.

>Large type B whales eat mainly seals, especially Weddell seals, and also hunt minke whales.

>Small type B killer whales have been observed hunting penguins and are believed to mainly eat fishes.

>Type C killer whales mostly eat Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni).

>Little is known about the diet of type D killer whales, however, they have been observed preying on Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) caught on longlines.

So if type C whales don't eat seals and type B whales don't eat fish, it's not surprising that no whale type likes to eat humans -- they're apparently just picky eaters.

It is estimated that bears kill over two million salmon a year. Attacks by salmon on bears are much more rare.

Relative to a shark, and from the Orca's perspective - we have small livers...

It turned to be more complicated than this. Killer whale is not one species, is a species complex. Some are more vicious than other. We still don't know lots of things about cetaceans.

Back in the 1970s, I was once sailing back from Catalina Island on my little 22 foot long sailboat after spending a week there. When I was about 5 miles off the California Coast, a Orca jumped out of the water as high as the top of my mast (or a little higher) and crashed into the water rocking my boat. I sent my girlfriend down below and I lay in the bottom of the cockpit holding the tiller and trying steer. The Orca repeated this three times. It was unnerving.

Good times. Not.

Did you ever look into whether the orcas' behavior might have been an attempt to knock you off the boat? Your story reminds me of this video of seal-hunting orcas making waves to knock seals into the ice. [1] I assume you weren't dressed as seals :)

[1] https://youtu.be/jhzfVnwx8cA

I had a Columbia 22, a very light weight boat. The Orca could have destroyed the boat or come over the side of the cockpit. I think it was just messing with me.

At the apex of it’s jumps out of the water it was looking down at me with dark eyes. I really thought it was a nasty creature.

I was in a 22' Excelsior near a gray whale when it decided to breech. Big whale + little boat == feeling of awe + healthy sense of how big the boat is not.

Wow, examining you! Amazing. Thank you for sharing this episode. Hemmingway could write a whole book on just that snippet.

"Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty. He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff. Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over the old man and over all of the skiff."

"I obscenity in thy mother's milk," muttered the old man.

Can whales even see much out of the water? I assumed they had the same blurry vision out of the water that humans have in the water due to the difference refractive index of water and air.

Not all humans have blurry vision underwater [1]. It seems, from the article, that children from that tribe can learn constrict their pupils and accommodate their lenses so as to see much better underwater.

But the quote that followed it is probably much more relevant to this discussion..."Seals and dolphins have a similar adaptation." Since orcas are actually the largest of the dolphin family and not whales, it might apply to them as well.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160229-the-sea-nomad-child...

Orca sometimes hunt seals on rocks, so it would make evolutionary sense for the to see well their prey there.

orcas have very good eyesight, including out of the water. they often use a technique called spyhopping where they intentionally poke out of the water to see along the surface of the water for navigation, to see prey further away, or just to inspect their surroundings.

> What the orcas were exploiting to their own advantage is a curious phenomenon known as “tonic immobility” (TI).

I would argue that qualifies as hacking great white sharks...

Great story, but Orca's learned about tonic immobility years ago. This isn't really new news.

FWIW, Orca pods in and around New Zealand have been filmed doing the exact same thing with sting rays. When flipped upside down, rays go into tonic immobility.

Here's a video from this in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqimOYOQjJ8

And a guy with way bigger balls than me demonstrating it on a shark underwater:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHr_MshhXuk

It’s mentioned in the article in passing, actually.

I believe the only news here is that they have been observed doing this to Great Whites for the first time (whom were previously considered apex predators).

https://www.sharktrust.org/en/tonic_immobility

According to this site, this has been observed previously:

"There is evidence that suggests orcas may use tonic immobility to prey on sharks.

In 1997, in the waters around the Farallon Islands, a female Orca was observed holding a White Shark upside down for 15 minutes, causing it to suffocate. Whether intentional or not, the Orca likely caused the shark to enter tonic immobility."

The 1997 incident was mentioned in the article as well.

The article mentions this being observed in 1997, too.

You mean we've known about Orcas exploiting tonic immobility for years, right? I can't think of any analytical technique that would allow us to know when Orcas started exhibiting this behavior. As our methods and wealth have allowed us to observe more behavior, we have recorded more behavior.

Humans have been observing Orcas for a tiny sliver of their existence. Orcas discovering a major new behavior just when we happen to have the means of observing them seems breathtakingly unlikely.

I meant it is a great article, but isn't really "news". I became an amateur Orca enthusiast maybe 4-5 years ago after seeing "LA Pod" in Marina Del Rey / Playa Vista outside of Los Angeles. Youtube has hours and hours of footage of how each pod hunts differently. The most interesting ones actually beach themselves on purpose to snag a meal right off the shore before carefully pushing themselves back into the water.

Yeah, I've seen video of an orca lunging onto a beach after some penguins, missing, then just sitting there sunning itself for a minute before humping back into the water like a seal. Really didn't expect that from a whale.

The matriarch whistles and the pod causes waves to knock seals off of the ice. The hungriest of the pod waits on the other side and grabs them. Then then share the food with each other. This level of coordination is pretty much unheard of in nature. Even dogs aren't this intelligent. Their level of intelligence is somewhat terrifying if you think about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VEwsI4SlY

And better (but long):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRWl77tK7Bg

Ever hear about the Eden pod? Notable because they recruited HUMANS to do the big prey killing for them.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_Austral...

That's a new one. Incredible.

Reading that I am not sure who recruited whom, but humans can definitely be trained.

This is by far the most incredible orca story I've read. There can be little doubt after this that they're sentient.

Aren't they a species of Dolphin rather than an actual Whale? I think the name comes from a mis-translation and should be whale killer.

I'll have a look for a source if I can later.

> Orcas discovering a major new behavior just when we happen to have the means of observing them seems breathtakingly unlikely.

i wouldn't be so sure of that. of course just because we witness doing them something for the first time doesn't mean that is their first time doing that thing, but the mammal-eating orcas are rather adaptable animals are obviously extremely intelligent. due to receding ice barriers, orcas are now eating beluga whales, stealing from polar bears, which is a previously unknown prey for them. also, orcas were well known to be aiding fisherman and whalers in australia with documented cases of herding whales into a bay. even today, fisherman have been noted as witnessing increasingly new behavior in orcas tracking down fishing boats to steal their catches. whales off the coast of south africa also eat great whites, and they also chase down dolphins, including massive feeding frenzies off the huge (like 1000+) dolphin herds there. it is not clear when this behavior started, but orcas do not typically eat dolphins.

orcas also have other behavioral techniques that are very human-like. off the coast of canada, there are orcas who visit a specific shallow area to receive a massage off of the smooth pebbles there.

so i would say it's breathtakingly unlikey that orcas are not learning new techniques all the time.

But fishing boats are (relatively) new to their environment -- Orcas have coexisted with sharks for ~10 million years.

It seems unlikely that they've just learned that behavior in the ~200 years we've been observing them scientifically

i am not arguing about orcas eating sharks being new behavior. i was just pointing out that one of the most intelligent species on the planet learning major new behavior is not breathtakingly unlikely.

> Humans have been observing Orcas for a tiny sliver of their existence.

Obviously true. But in fact the dolphin family (of which orcas are the largest member) branched off of toothed whales only about 10M years ago, making them only a little bit older than hominids. We're both pretty recent arrivals.

But in how many of those 10M years have humans been observing and recording Orca hunting behavior toward sharks? The first writing systems only date back ~5000 years.

I know. It was a segue to a point about cetacean evolution. Like great apes, they're pretty recent innovations.

> Orcas discovering a major new behavior just when we happen to have the means of observing them seems breathtakingly unlikely.

In all fairness, humans have discovered many major new behaviours in that same time period.

It's way cooler than that when we first started noticing we also had biologists in the area with shark transponders. After the first attack the great white dove to massive depths, after a second attack a bunch ended up fleeing the area.

there is a great documentary called the woman who swims with killer whales which documents dr. ingrid visser's research and rescue efforts of the new zealand orca population. her research has done a lot to showcase that the orcas are in danger, particularly of toxins. she shows in the documentary how she recovers discarded rays and does toxicity reports on the rays to theorize what toxicity levels the orcas have, since they are their primary, if only, source of food. (the "resident", fish-eating orcas are extremely picky.)

the woman who swims with killer whales: https://vimeo.com/45809457

One of the prevailing theories about the extinction of Megalodons (60 foot great whites essentially) is that Orca's out competed them for their primary food sources. So thanks Orcas. Without you we'd be living in a world with 60 foot sharks and that would be absolutely bloody terrifying.

Imagine how different naval history would be if the Megalodon still existed and considered humans / boats prey.

The size of vessel needed to be safe would be mind boggling. Would we have had to wait for steel to be invented?!

Implausible that it would have changed much. People went hunting for sperm whales in small wooden boats. Sperm whales are even bigger than Megalodon. Sure they're peaceful ordinarily, but when you start throwing harpoons into them, not so much.

Okay, that is a bit wild. I wonder if we'll be able to catch a parent Orca teaching a young Orca how to bite a shark to get just the 'good bits' (the liver) and leave all the other stuff for something else to eat.

Me too, I always enjoy learning about the various degrees of intelligence in other species.

It seems whales, dolphins, and octopuses are among the most intelligent sea creatures, from what I've seen.

So long, and thanks for all the fish ;)

This was a terrific read , informative and concise without getting too technical. Would love recommendations on similar articles which are in different areas but well written.

Except for comparing raw liver to deep fried mars bars. There are no trans fats in raw liver oil. Otherwise it was great.

The analogy was to establish shark liver as a decadent treat that also happens to have important nutrients, much like a deep fried mars bar with added vitamins might be.

My point is that raw liver oil is healthy. Super heated vegetable oil is not. The orcas are not eating junk food, so I don’t think it is a decadent treat for them.

What an excellent article. I was very surprised to see the 'specs' difference between the animals, I've never seen either in real life.

The crazy part is when you actually take out a tape measure and visualize 9.6 meters.

Orca successfully baiting birds with fish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW_t89NgVCk

Why do the orcas leave the rest once they get the liver? I understand why the liver is the prize, but why waste (from the orcas' pov) the rest?

My best guess would be that orcas love eating fatty things like shark livers.

Perhaps they just don't like sharks and are eating them out of spite, or the livers are a treat that don't alter their normal feeding schedule, which I imagine involves constant eating of fish.

I'm guessing they're successful hunters and can afford to eat only the choicest bits of their prey.

I saw a good documentary on grizzly bears catching salmon. While the younger, less successful bears will eat any salmon they can catch, the older and more experienced bears can catch so many salmon that they'll just slit them open, eat the roe, and throw the rest of the salmon away, so that they're getting maximum calories per unit of volume in their stomach.

I'm curious if showing a video to an unrelated pod of Orcas would be enough to teach them the skill.

After readfing the article is unclear to me why they think that orcas are the culprit necessarily. Clean cuts without damaging pectoral fins?. Killer whales don't make scissor cuts, they crush bones, dismember and literally skin its preys shaking it.

Looks much more like a hidden case of pirate fishing to me. A human's job. Squalene stored in liver is expensive as extra-fine lubricant for machines, having several specialized industrial applications. On the other hand, is not very good as food. If I'm not wrong, shark liver is known to be toxic for mammals.

The article says it was caught on film.

orcas eating sharks is well known. if i am not mistaken, orca pods off of california and south africa are the main ones we know about. great whites have been observed to leave the area off of south africa when orcas roll in.

Odd phrasing that, "have learned".

"Some wasps have learned to immobilise spiders and deposit their eggs inside of them."

I think many would get the wrong idea if they didn't click through and read carefully and skeptically. There's no evidence in the article that Orcas learned this shark vulnerability with any more sophistication or recency than the wasps did the spiders.

Well, we know that Orcas teach their young to hunt using waves, and by beaching themselves [0]. So it's not a stretch to assume that this is acquired knowledge, and not instinctual.

[0]: http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071214/full/news.2007.380.ht...

We also occasionally observe a particular orca pod hunting an unusual prey other pods don't hunt, using some novel technique we've never seen in orcas before.

I can't think of a particular example offhand, but that sort of thing sure looks like learned tribal knowledge.

My thoughts exactly. On the evolutionary timescale we have been studying animals for a miniscule amount of time. Unless some "new behaviour" is caused by human influence, I am very sceptical of claims like this. "Orcas have learned to x" == "Humans have learned that Orcas do x". Still a really interesting read though.

There is a big difference between an individual learning from experience, and a species 'learning' through the process of evolution - the process in each case is very different. You can arguably say that they are both forms of learning, but that does not mean that they are the same.

I'm not so sure of that. The smarter whales in general are quite capable of experimenting, learning useful behaviors, and teaching them to their friends and children.

It's not as uncommon as you might think. There's crows that have learned to crack walnuts by shoving them under car wheels at stop lights, and they actually watch the lights, not just the cars, to tell when it's safe to walk in the street. It's not genetic; newly-introduced crows pick up the behavior from watching the existing flock.

I have been watching quite a few crow documentaries and talks on Netflix and YouTube.

Also, the articles on incentivizing crows to exchange coins or cigarette butts for food is quite interesting.

The article said that the orcas' diets and hunting behaviours vary by geography and population. Cetaceans are known to be extremely intelligent and able to learn. I'm not sure it's obvious whether this is a learned, cultural behaviour taught to offspring, or an instinctual, evolved behaviour.

There are specific populations of dolphins that exhibit complex hunting behaviors that have to be learned and are exclusive to those in the community that have a chance to learn the skill.

Usually, "learn" implies that a behavior is acquired through non-genetic means. And orcas have indeed been observed transmitting behaviors through non-genetic means.

Neat! They didn't cover this exact technique, but a kids' show we watch talked about orcas eating sharks: Wild Kratts, Season 4, Episode 21 - "This Orca Likes Sharks"

What a great article; wish they had included the referenced video though.

I don't see anything new here, I thought we have known this about Orcas for years? What is the purpose of this article?

Ive never heard about this. It's very interesting to me.

I think it was common understanding that Great White sightings decline when there are Orcas in the area, but I've never heard of these predatory behaviors just to get some shark livers

It may be common understanding amongst certain groups. I don't think it's common understanding amongst the general population. I could be wrong of course...

Edit: I've never heard of it before.

Totally fair! Either way it's an interesting article

>What is the purpose of this article?

Perhaps that those of us who are not your 'we' may also know about it.

The title does suggest that this is something only recently learned, but it seems more like humans have learned something about orcas than the orcas learning anything.

Ah.... I see you are confusing Hacker News with the normal Marine Biology forum you post on.

>News

This isn't news, so it doesn't belong here.

Here are some relevant sections of the guidelines, please go take a look:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://xkcd.com/1053 espouses the benefits of purposely choosing an encouraging response.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com