Orcas found to kill blue whales
nationalgeographic.com
nationalgeographic.com
https://www.surfertoday.com/environment/what-is-a-killer-wha...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Awwducational/comments/1tryxl/the_n...
Take that with a grain of salt, as I couldn't find a reliable source.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070630040841/http://animals.ab...
https://www.yachtingworld.com/cruising/orca-attacks-rudder-l...
It is probably way to naive to assume that they mistake boats for prey as they are highly intelligent animals. They seem to know what fishing boats are and are known to steal fishes from long lines.
These attacks seem to primarily target the rudders. Of course this is the one part of the boat they can easily damage, most hulls should be able to withstand the attacks better. Also, attacking the fins is probably very universal, when you are attacking another aquatic animal. I wonder, how much the Orcas can understand the extend to which boats depend on the rudders though.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/13/the-tale...
"What explains the new behaviour? Was there reduced noise during the Covid lockdown? Selling says yes. “No big game fishing, no whale watching or sailing boats, no fast ferries, fewer merchant ships.” He’s intrigued by the idea that the orca had two months with reduced noise – “Something most of them probably never experienced before” – and considers the possibility they felt angry as the noise restarted"
Or maybe the origin story is just bogus
Looks like humans aren't the only predators who use persistence hunting.
That is, comparable to humans (and to a lessor extent canines') ability to regulate body temperature for long durations in the heat.
The liver is the target because it's the most calorie dense meat in the shark, if not the entire ocean. At least out of what orcas eat. Plus it's probably delicious.
They also coordinate in groups to make waves that wash seals and penguins off ice floes.
And they are said to drown whale calves just to eat their tongue.
He is actually understating this. Not only is the Blue Whale the largest animal living now, it is the largest animal that has ever lived.
It is roughly the size of a Boeing 737 (a 737-700 is longer(110 ft for a 737-700 vs 98 ft for a blue whale), but a blue whale weighs more (155,000lbs max ramp weight for a 737-700 versus 200,000lbs for a blue whale))
Trigger warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsXBeoqVN0c
However, I've never heard of orcas routinely killing for sport, especially large whales. Is there an article or study you know of? It is not an easy kill for them, and I was under the impression that they do it for certain delicacies. For example, they will kill great white sharks specifically to eat their livers, which is insanely high in calories, and then nothing else of the shark.
It's pretty hard to watch orcas use their tail to playfully bat dying seals 50' up in the air and not think they're doing it for fun. Even if there's a learning component to the purpose.
And it's usually when they've already pushed the seal to exhaustion and are extending things so the kids can play.
However, the seal punting the commenter was referring to does indeed seem to be for sport, play, training, or all of the above. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/G7WGIH35JBE?t=21
For one, it shows the sheer power of an orca. According to the NOAA Fisheries, a harbor seal (what transient orcas typically hunt) weights 24 pounds at birth and then 180-285 pounds as an adult. So, if we assume that seal in the video is an adolescent or an adult, the orca is launching something probably weighing at least 100-200 pounds about 50-100ft into the air. I do find it disturbing, but I have seen some cases where the orcas had played with a seal and then let it live.
This discussion of power reminded me of orcas hunting dolphins. The following videos might be harsh if you really like dolphins, but it shows the insane power and speed of an orca. They can move so fast in the water, jump tens of feet out of the water while weighing several tons, and ram things with such force killing them. That's also why I balk at calling them the wolves of the sea. I do not know of a single other predator that has the intelligence plus the insane physicality that they do. I think one would be hard pressed to find a more apex predator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTirD7pCBVE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JsBB0BGM4M
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vladimir-Melnikov-2/pub...
I watched a few videos. They are obviously fairly smart, their interaction with people and each other is thoughtful. At some moments, you really tend to think "there is an almost-human intelligence locked in a very nonhuman body, what could they achieve if they had versatile hands like we do"?
I smiled at the startup idea. I once flew my not-yet-wife to NYC (from Australia) to propose, but went cheap on the tickets. Our route was something like Adelaide - Sydney, I think - Taipei - Anchorage at 3am - NYC. Probably a miracle she said yes.
I’m confused a bit
“ In all, scientists describe three blue whale killings, in March and April of 2019 and March of 2021, in a new study published this week in the journal Marine Mammal Science.”
Instead, orcas hunt much more similarly to humans. They speak to each other, coordinate special roles, teach while they're hunting, and they have highly coordinated and practiced attacks. The way they kill whales is usually quite brutal, because it normally requires tiring out the whales first and then start in with bites. Although orcas are ridiculously powerful (their jaw strength is basically immeasurable compared to land animals), they can still be seriously injured by large whales'. So, orcas essentially exhaust the whales and then ram and nick at them until dealing some final blows or drown the whale. During these hunts, the orcas will switch in and out so as to not tire themselves out. As an aside, there have been instances of people seeing humpbacks intervene orca attacks on both humpbacks and other whale species.
I would not be surprised in the least if orcas are as intelligent or more so than humans, if such a thing could be determined. Either way, they are seriously intelligent, and their physical capabilities are second to none. They are awe inspiring animals in every way. And yet, we keep them in prisons.
ETA: There's also the under appreciated communication aspect of canines (and orcas) ability to take and obey direction from others.
There's lots of research on how despite learning from mimicry, non-human primate intelligence might be relatively capped by this limitation.
Wolves use a highly coordinated attack, where lead dogs harry the prey and are replaced as they tire.
Also, you need more than a simple strategy to take down an animal that can hurt you by kicking you with sharp hooves, poking you with antlers, or calling on 300 of it's close friends to trample you and your little pack to death.
Watching ~6 wolves chase 6 candidate buffalo, then quickly joining forces as soon as one target makes a mistake is incredible to watch.
Same as when they taunt individuals to draw them out and attack the flank.
And while the verbal communication of orcas is impressive, the wolves use of howls when out of sight, and visual cues while in sight is no less impressive to me.
Communication and cooperation are things orcas exhibit over and over. Also, wolves, as far as I know, are purely instinctual and do not communicate or pass down learned knowledge. Orcas do. There are several documented instances of one or a few individuals in an orca pod discovering some novel way to eat something or discovering a new animal altogether to eat that is then taught within the pod.
There's one specific hunting technique for mammal hunting orcas that has been observed that showcases this. When hunting mammals, who have excellent hearing and are intelligent themselves, orcas can sometimes reach a point where it's not working. So, the pod of orcas will resume chatting (vocalizing) and start to leave the area while they choose a single orca to stay silently behind. Once the other orcas leave, the mammals (usually seals) relax, giving the silent orca hiding a chance to capture. Once capture, the other orcas return to share the meal. Wolves don't do anything like that.
What's more impressive (be it humans playing sports or pack predators hunting): a team calling an audible play while on the attack, or the team that is so well knit that it can accomplish the same without yelling it out loud?
>Wolves don't do anything like that.
Wolves will both silently stalk and drive/funnel prey to a waiting ambush. And they do vocally call for others to rejoin them when out of sight.
I'm not sure what better analog you might expect, given that wolves aren't pursuing above surface prey from underwater.
But would you discredit orcas for not climbing out of the water and chasing seals on the ice?
The real difference is large wolf pray doesn’t escape the way seals can onto land but are significantly more dangerous to the wolves. Such prey can both out run them in most cases or severely injury them in direct confrontations, so wolves need to use deep snow, river banks, or extreme exhaustion methods. It’s actually more complex hunting behavior than Orcas vs whales, though adapted to different environments.
In terms of communication Alphas don’t seem to micromanage hunts the way Orcas do, but they will call them off etc. Which might relate to land being a more variable environment, you don’t run into random ditches in the open ocean.
I'm having trouble finding the statistics again, but I think the success rate of stereotypical pack or pride hunters like wolves or lions is actually quite low. Whereas it's my understanding that orca success rates are pretty high, despite hunting far more intelligent animals.
This doesn't really make any sense. I realize it's fun to have opposite opinions of the majority on the internet but animals don't make complex tools, they don't have the ability for substantial transfer of information from generation to generation, and the complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language.
I'd be really surprised to learn there was a single lifeform on earth with anything approaching human level intelligence.
> they don't have the ability for substantial transfer of information from generation to generation
They have to do so vocally. Technology development doesn't necessarily correlate, positively or negatively, with intelligence. Orcas and whales at large are highly limited by their appendages and environments in terms of technology development.
> complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language
Are you able to understand orca what orcas "say"? That seems to be a very strong statement when we know quite little about what they're able to communicate. Furthermore, whales having echolocation have built-in transmitters and receivers that are in addition to their normal vocalizations and hearing. It seems weird to make claims about how they experience the world given no one really knows. But we can surmise the possibility based upon scientific facts.
> I'd be really surprised to learn there was a single lifeform on earth with anything approaching human level intelligence.
If you put a human brain in an orca body (accepting the hypothetical), what could that brain do in that body and environment? Very little with regards to technology development (writing, tool use, etc.).
>Dolphins, which obviously include orcas, actually have more complex brains than ours
And this:
>>complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language
>Are you able to understand orca what orcas "say"? That seems to be a very strong statement when we know quite little about what they're able to communicate.
Are you able to understand what orcas "think"?
This is a good book to take a look at: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Thinkers-Inside-Dolphins-Porpois...
> Are you able to understand what orcas "think"?
No I do not, but one can surmise from the scientific study of them and behavioral observations. My point about them making a strong statement is that it isn't backed up by anything except a human-centric bias of intelligence.
And the person I replied to make an incredibly strong claim:
> complexity of communication in even the cleverest animals is very low compared to human language
That needs backing up. In the event that there is no backup, which I don't believe there is, then we have to leave possibility open, possibility that's informed by scientific and behavioral studies.
Right, we have writing. They do pass information on in the form of habits, hunting or otherwise. It took humans a long time (many many generations) to collectively have the concept of the number 0. The things we have figured out and spend years passing on in school are hard-won and written down. The few humans who do figure out fundamentally new concepts often interact through written collections.
How about math? There are other species that understand addition and subtraction, I think, but none that can do multiplication or division.
Our species also knows how to make glass and refined metals and styrofoam and various concrete/mortar/brick formations. I doubt that anyone is an expert in all of the above and that most people in the developed world can only hope to obtain these things by going out and purchasing it from a store.
Furthermore, putting a bunch of intelligent but completely uneducated humans on an island is unlikely to result in a colony that understands multiplication and division in the next 100 or maybe even 1000 years.
Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain.
The ability to store information is a big technological leap. Even then, it's taken us as a species 5,000 years to get here once we had writing.
Also, humans were comfortably at the top for the food chain even before we needed arithmetic or writing.
(Arguably, we started to need arithmetic and writing because we ate all the animals.)
Definitely, except for lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, anacondas, pythons, sharks, crocodiles, alligators, bears, wolves, hyenas, coyotes, boars and ants, all of which have hunted humans and have maneaters among their ranks.
Humans were never apex predators... there was always something else that ate them, and though it is less often nowadays, it still happens.
Whatever virtue humans have as a species, it has nothing to do with being able to kill everything. I would call that an indulgence, not a virtue. Today, being able to kill something contributes nothing to survival. Compare effective hunting skills to skills that generate significant income. Money has far more to contribute to survival and procreation than having lethal hunting skills, an entirely worthless skill to have in nearly all modern societies. There are so few societies left where hunting is necessary, and we're talking about a few thousands or tens of thousands of people at most among 7B.
> Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain.
Which isn't true. Humans used to hunt mammoths way back when we had zero education. (Some even claim that we hunted them to extinction.)
It doesn't get really get more 'top of the food chain' than that.
Sure it does. Aside from giant birds, crocodiles, and leopards, early humans likely had to contend with bears, sabertooth cats, snakes, hyenas, Komodo dragons, and even other hominins. As prey, the past was not a pleasant place for humans and our ancestors, because they were prey, not apex predators. You know, apex means nothing eats it. Just last year an alligator ate a man in Louisiana and they will again. That sort of disqualifies our species as "apex." The alligator is an apex predator because nothing predates them. Making sense yet?
Human inventions and discoveries can definitely be lost/forgotten (the bow and arrow was forgotten at some point on the way to Australia, hence boomerangs and atlatls). People from cultures that don't have multiplication and division have the capability to learn it.
Orcas are actually only one of two animals in the world, other than us, to go through menopause. It's an interesting biological development that some estimate it is so older orca females (orcas are matriarchal societies) to not sexually compete with younger females and can concentrate on leading and teaching to pass down knowledge. Wild orca females live quite long.
Like I said, wolves are certainly amazing animals, but I feel orcas are on another level. And we don't cage wolves as brutally as we do orcas. That, I am angry about.
We basically just talk about orcas and how we can decode their language moving towards bidirectional comm.
> The killer whale or orca (Orcinus orca) is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member.
If you ever have the chance to see them mating in the wild, about 30 seconds is all it takes to undo any goodwill you might have ever felt for them.