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Comment by jiggywiggy | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions it. One of the most mind-blowing facts is that there has never been a recorded human death caused by an Orca.

There are many possible explanations for it, selective eaters, not tasty, knowing what they are getting themselves into.

At the same time they are curious, playful, and it seems emotional, if they have trends like breaking boats & carrying dead fish. It's a miracle such playfulness never ever accidentally killed a human.

After Sperm whales they have the largest brains in the world. Of course big sections of that is dedicated to their complicated bodily functions. But I think we are most likely severely underestimating their intelligence.

Edit: "a recorded human death in the wild"

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Maybe you mean in the wild? A high-profile death-by-Orca occurred at Seaworld [1] but I think this was more of an intentional revenge rather than accidental playfulness.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Brancheau

Yep, the article has that “in the wild” clarification

> but I think this was more of an intentional revenge rather than accidental playfulness.

At first blush this struck me as a silly comment, so I read the article... and boy, are you right. It really does sound like an intentional, even methodical killing. Here's the description from the wiki:

> As part of the end-of-show routine, [Dawn Brancheau] was at the edge of the pool, rubbing Tilikum's head. She was lying with her face next to Tilikum's on a slide-out, which is a platform submerged about a foot into the water. SeaWorld claims that she was pulled into the water by her ponytail. Some witnesses reported seeing Tilikum grab Brancheau by the arm or shoulder. The orca's move seems to have been very quick, pulling her underwater and drowning her. At least a dozen patrons witnessed Brancheau in the water with Tilikum. Employees used nets and threw food at Tilikum in an attempt to distract him. Moving from pool to pool in the complex, they eventually directed Tilikum to a smaller, medical pool, where it would be easier to calm him. After approximately 45 minutes, Tilikum released Brancheau's body.

I suppose I'm anthropomorphizing and making a lot of assumptions, but holding that poor woman under water for 45 minutes strikes me as making sure that she's dead--particularly since its caretakers (who, presumably, have a strong understanding of how to influence its behavior) were actively attempting to entice it to let her go. For 45 minutes.

Really wild stuff.

A different wikipedia page (about another of the people Tilikum killed) describes the incident differently. I have not investigated all the citations to explain the difference:

Tilikum became an infamous whale after attacking and killing his trainer, forty-year-old SeaWorld staff member Dawn Brancheau. Tilikum grabbed her arm, scalped the woman, fractured her jaw and killed her by blunt force trauma, the result of which was a contentious and controversial legal case over the safety of working with orca whales and the ethics of keeping live whales and other marine mammals in captivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Keltie_Byrne

Honestly, it's a bit surprising that people find this surprising. Orcas are air-breathing mammals, and conscious breathers at that. They kill other mammals, namely whales, often by drowning them intentionally. They know what drowning is.

The other is that these are massive animals placed in water prisons, constantly exposed to the sun and concrete and fed fish they wouldn't eat in the wild. It would be like putting a human in a small 3'x3' box with the top exposed to the sun and fed dog food and then being surprised that they're on edge.

That orca definitely killed the trainer on purpose or did it in a way such that it didn't care whether she lived or died and was releasing frustration. An orca could bite a human in half in the same way that a human can bite through jello, which shows that the orca was displaying frustration and exasperation. Orcas have committed suicide while in captivity, by intentionally and repeatedly ramming their heads into the concrete walls to cause brain hemorrhages or starving themselves.

To be frank, it is mindblowing to me that people view these incidences as examples of orca intelligence rather than exhibitions of human cruelty and unintelligence.

It can be both. What an unnecessarily confrontational comment.

UNNECESSARY? people, including me, went to this type of shit show and had fun. whales drowning humans is a slap on our history

edit: and one reaaaaly primitive, you know, mammals only worth when on the sapiens sapiens ballpark

It shouldn't be both.

I'll agree it is confrontational, but I addressed it to people in general, so it's meant to be confrontational to the collective. And it's justifiably so because these beings continue to be held in captivity, bred in captivity, and even captured from the wild to be held in captivity. It's pure torture that people charge for visitors to come and laugh and gawk at.

> It would be like putting a human in a small 3'x3' box

I get that you're trying to make a point, but this kind of hyperbole only discredits it.

> Orcas have committed suicide while in captivity, by intentionally and repeatedly ramming their heads into the concrete walls to cause brain hemorrhages

I think you mean AN orca did this (Hugo), and it was after being kept in solitary isolation for 12 years, something that SeaWorld thankfully doesn't do.

> I get that you're trying to make a point, but this kind of hyperbole only discredits it.

How is it hyperbole, exactly?

https://www.thedodo.com/seaworld-tank-size-1282993451.html

https://www.thedodo.com/lolita-orca-45-years-1301583008.html

Wild orcas travel on average 40 miles a day, can travel 100 miles in a single day, and make round trips in the thousands of miles. They dive several hundred feet every day. It isn't hyperbole unless you're going to bikeshed over the exact footage. The chemicals in the pool and drugs they are given are also another thing.

> I think you mean AN orca did this

Hugo was with a tank mate Lolita at the time but had been in isolation prior to that.

Here's a recent case that was recorded: https://nymag.com/article/2016/06/did-a-depressed-seaworld-o...

Let's not act like the orca entertainment industry is forthcoming with data.

https://inherentlywild.co.uk/deceased-orcas/

There are cases of captive orcas arguably attempting suicide, either by intentional ramming, stranding, or starvation. It is indeed hard to find good data on this (I wonder why...), and so it is hard to state absolutes.

This ignores the much more common and documented violent outbursts towards both trainers and fellow tankmates/cellmates induced by the stress they experience in captivity.

Showed my math in another comment, but your claim is off by a factor of about 370, so that’s how it’s hyperbole. That is not bikeshedding, that’s just very very wrong.

Mixing up Miami Seaquarium in a discussion about SeaWorld is confused. The two environments are totally incomparable.

If you believe Blackfish, dolphins (which orcas are a type of) can just stop breathing if they want to commit suicide, so the ramming of the heads is moot. Humans occasionally ram their heads without intent to kill, so why would orcas be different?

It is bikeshedding. My comment about the box was in general a sentiment and an illustrative and qualitative example, not something that can be directly compared enough to calculate some exact number and certainly not something where some ideal number affects the sentiment.

For example, the average American walks 1.5-2 miles a day, so that's a factor of over x20 for the average travel distance of orcas (which by the way is average linear distance, i.e., starting point to ending point, and not total travel which is much higher). Humans don't dive and live very horizontal lives, while orcas dive 100-500 feet multiple times every day. Their tanks at SeaWorld are only approximately 30 feet deep, lesser at other places.

So your "factor of about 370" doesn't make any sense, because it myopically only takes into account relative size and a false comparison of human height versus orca length.

And by the way, I said a box with the lid off, so your mention of a 3'x3'x3' is incorrect. It's hard to believe how my off-the-cuff suggestion of 3'x3' versus your "calculated" 13'x13' discredits my point in any way. And I left something off, because the orcas experience strong chemicals in the water, so the human box would need a gas of some sort constantly irritating the skin and eyes.

So yes, it is bikeshedding, because here we are.

> Mixing up Miami Seaquarium in a discussion about SeaWorld is confused. The two environments are totally incomparable.

I'm not confused about anything or mixing anything up. I genuinely have no idea what you're referring to or even getting at. Also, you do know that SeaWorld loans and sells orcas to places that often have far worse conditions than SeaWorld's already deplorable conditions, right?

I don't know what you're getting at in your last comment at all. Orcas weigh several tons. And an orca intentionally stranding isn't trying to commit suicide by suffocation. I didn't even say so. Orcas die from stranding due to their immense weight affecting their internal organs.

I have no idea how one can do any research into the lives orcas live in captivity and feel anything remotely close to okay with it.

> qualitative example, not something that can be directly compared enough to calculate some exact number

> like putting a human in a small 3'x3' box

Good thing you provided a number then? If you want to make a qualitative example, say "it would be like if a human lived in a heated swimming pool for the rest of its life" which is more accurate. Instead, you (and I think it's obvious you know what you're doing) throw out a number, then when you're demonstrated wrong, backpedal and say it was supposed to be qualitative.

> the orcas experience strong chemicals in the water

Do you think there aren't strong chemicals in the ocean? Salt is pretty corrosive. The ocean isn't exactly a homogeneous solution. There are a ton of pathogens as well, in fact most of them on earth live in the ocean.

> you do know that SeaWorld loans and sells orcas to places that often have far worse conditions than SeaWorld's

Yes, and that's a ringing endorsement for SeaWorld in my book. It means they are a leader in the care of these mammals. They actually have to participate in loan programs in order to be AZA accredited, which they are.

> I have no idea how one can do any research into the lives orcas live in captivity and feel anything remotely close to okay with it.

This is common among people who just haven't done much research on it. Marine mammal captivity is an important activity humans do in order to promote education, not to mention conservation (for species reintroduction or rehab in case of a catastrophe). It's a little unintuitive the same way that hunting (killing animals) supports wildlife preserves is unintuitive, but nevertheless there are good reasons we have these institutions and getting rid of them would be a huge mistake.

Keeping them in a pool in your yard for entertainment is not the same as conservation.

Try telling that to some of the world's best-known conservationists who supported SeaWorld: Julie Scardina, Jack Hanna, Guy Harvey, Bindi Irwin...

3 of those encourage actual conservation in sea pens, not tanks - one of which actively swims with them.

More importantly, the orcas taken didn't need conservation they were fine before

1. Then that should provide credence to their stances in your book. And yet they still supported SeaWorld?

2. That’s a statement that would hold true for any species and for conservation as a whole. In essence, denying the need for conservation in the first place. Ignorant of the daily catastrophe that’s happening in the wild.

Allowing injured or rejected juveniles to explore is not the same as a tank.

Taking a calf from the wild that would otherwise be fine for 60 years is not conservation.

At this point I'm not sure if you're stupid or just evil.

The ocean is rapidly becoming uninhabitable for all kinds of life, orcas included. While we would previously expect a calf to live 60 years, that number is slowly dwindling and may accelerate in a downward direction. Contaminants like BPAs and BFRs are a big deal and already starting to have an effect in New Zealand on the orca population’s food supply.

I don’t know how you expect injured and rejected juveniles to survive outside of an artificial environment. Orcas are social animals, and they need a pod.

As far as stupid/evil, well believe what you like but I just believe in resilience. The same way we should have an arctic seed vault backing up seeds we should have a backup for different kinds of sea life.

> I get that you're trying to make a point, but this kind of hyperbole only discredits it.

...are you going to expand on why you think it's hyperbole?

Well, simple ratios. A human is roughly 6 feet tall, so a 3x3x3 box is a box with side length 1/2 of the height. The equivalent for an orca would be if you took an orca’s length, 26 feet, and had the enclosure be 13x13x13. The volume would be 2197 cubic feet, roughly 16,000 gallons that is.

Seaworld Orlando’s enclosure is approx 6 million gallons, so that statement is off by about 37,500%.

Could it have been an act of (frustrated) affection instead?

> that poor woman

The poor orca who's been abducted at 2 and kept in a swimming pool for decades for fun and profit you mean ?

Not, the woman. Check your priorities.

>The autopsy report said that Brancheau died from drowning and blunt force trauma. Her spinal cord was severed, and she had sustained fractures to her jawbone, ribs, and a cervical vertebra. Her scalp was completely torn off from her head, and her left elbow and left knee had been dislocated.

Tilikum weighed over 12,000 pounds. Orcas have bite forces apparently estimated to be around to be at least 20,000 psi (13 times that of a jaguar), can launch themselves tens of feet out of the water, can ram great whites and whales to disorient or knock them out, and more. It's honestly surprising the injuries weren't worse and showcases the orca was frustrated.

the article does specify in the wild, and that it doesn't hold true regarding captivity

check out the article

No one can ever just tell the facts about this case without some kind of slant. There's nothing we know that indicates this was an act of revenge. Tilikum was much more mistreated by the orcas he lived with than he was by any human, so if there was to be an act of revenge it would've likely been on another orca.

Or that because of their natural social structure, he wasn't as bothered by it as being trotted out to dance every five minutes while living in a glass jar

You really think they prefer sitting motionless in a tank to having a task to do? How is that consistent with any of the rest of mammalia?

In HN tradition you've missed what I was trying to say, attention from other orca may be more welcome then idiots with legs, regardless of if it's negative.

You also make the dumb assumption that all creatures are here to perform a task, that isn't how real life species work

Not quite, I took your logic and simply showed that it leads to the wrong result.

I never said anyone is here to perform a task. That said, I am happier pressing buttons on a machine than I am just lying motionless. It doesn’t matter that the activity is artificial, doing something is by far preferable to doing nothing.

I'm not sure, they spend decades at sea essentially doing nothing, but fulfil their purpose, without performing.

Also if you're happy pushing buttons, you're probably unhappy.

I’m glad you can make the statement “if you are happy you’re probably unhappy” because it really solidifies the fact that you think and speak in absurdisms.

If you think orcas are doing nothing at sea, how is that morally different from them doing nothing in a tank?

You missed a crucial part of my comment.

Freedom to roam, even if spending much of their time doing nothing it's still freedom.

It’s a tradeoff. Humans are probably better/healthier if we are given freedom to roam the savanna, run miles in every direction. But if that’s the bar for allowing a human to exist, then there won’t be as many humans because the savanna can’t support 7 billion people, especially not with any kind of stability. A single blip in the food supply or weather would lead to a mass die-off.

That’s why we diversified and created towns and cities, artificial, restricted environments that allow life but are not as fun (or possible) to run around, but agriculture makes life a little more guaranteed and predictable. The same is true for orcas. The ocean is great, but it’s also dangerous and volatile. If we create a “town” for orcas it provides support for life at the exchange of freedom. This is hardly different from what we humans put ourselves through.

Google says that there are about a billion sharks in the world but only 50k orcas. Meanwhile there are only about 10 humans killed by sharks a year. So zero recorded humans killed by orcas isn't that surprising. I wouldn't personally volunteer to swim with them.

Edit: granted, I didn't mention that it's typically great white, tiger and bulls that are life threatening among sharks. So it isn't really a billion versus 50k. Regardless, there aren't really that many fatalities by sharks per year.

Latest estimation is that that are only 3500 great whites with more then 300+ recorded attacks, excluding other types of sharks.

Next to that Orcas frequently interact with humans, more than sharks. For instance as this article describes, they are quite active in the tiny mediterranean sea. Which some human even swim across (60 attempts per year).

Also they live close to the surface, they need to breath every 5-15 minutes. And just as sharks they enjoy Sea Lions, which sharks often confuse with humans.

3500 sounds low IMO when you look at some of the drone videos in SoCal of the people tracking these (mostly juveniles in SoCal).

Also they don't often confuse Sea Lions for humans, but it's still a good explanation for the few attacks that do occur. It's actually impressive how good they are at recognizing their prey.

> Google says that there are about a billion sharks in the world but only 50k orcas. Meanwhile there are only about 10 humans killed by sharks a year. So zero recorded humans killed by orcas isn't that surprising. I wouldn't personally volunteer to swim with them.

Sharks are a group of taxonomical orders. Orcas are a species.

You wouldn't want to swim with them anyway, for the same reason you wouldn't want to run with a herd of stampeding cows.

Orcas are almost certainly several different species as well, but they remain officially classified as one until scientists agree on how to divide them up.

I thought orcas were traditionally divided into three types. There is no standard for what is or isn't a "species".

But it doesn't matter at all; the difference between the taxonomic level of "sharks" and the taxonomic level of "orcas" is unimaginably large regardless of what you want to call the levels.

I thought the standard was that they had to produce fertile offspring.

Not at all. Without even mentioning plants and bacteria, wolves are canis lupus and dogs are canis familiaris. But interfertility is often a bigger problem between two types of dog than it is between a dog and a wolf.

Interestingly, orcas have a particular interest in great white sharks. Apparently they enjoy shark livers, and will hunt and kill great whites just to eat the liver and leave the rest of the carcass: https://www.iflscience.com/watch-a-great-white-shark-getting...

Orcas are savage, incredibly strong, smart, and capable pack hunters. Absolute apex predator of the sea and sharks don't stand a chance.

Shark livers are close to the size of the whole shark, and are full of fat, which the sharks rely on for flotation because they have no swim bladder like bony fish have.

To be clear, shark livers are so big because they have an extra job ours don't.

More accurately, no wild Orca's have killed humans. 4 people have died from captive Orca's.

Seems fitting.

3 of them killed by the same orca.

My ex was friends with one of them. They were biology students together at the University of Victoria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Keltie_Byrne

> knowing what they are getting themselves into

I've noticed a real hesitancy to ascribe such complex reasoning to cetaceans. But these are thoughtful animals that in one instance led the creation of a complex and astonishingly cooperative co-hunting relationship with human whalers. They clearly understand humans are able to kill baleen whales even orcas can't handle (adult humpbacks, for example). It seems obvious that they also understand the potential consequences of competing with / preying upon a highly social alpha predator.

Because when Orcas kill humans they leave no evidence and no witnesses. They're professionals after all.

Cetaceans are already pretty fancy, but Orcas wear a tuxedo everywhere, so you know they are pros.

Not enough people tend to swim in the waters they thrive in. And the ones that do are experienced enough not to push things.

Sharks on the other hand, swim in waters people tend to frequent.

It's a numbers game.

The higher number of shark attacks may also have to do with water conditions, which could lead a shark to mistakenly interpret a human as food or competition for food:

    "A large number of (shark) bites occur when water conditions are poor" 
    - https://saveourseas.com/worldofsharks/why-do-sharks-bite-people

In the wild most humans do not fuck around with Orcas long enough to find out. I’m fairly certain an Orca would eventually kill a human for fun.

Well, there haven't been many deaths that we know of. However, the behavior of the orcas seems to be a learned behavior. Obviously they're doing this for a reason. Who knows, maybe this pod of whales has developed a taste?

There are a few ways I could see this happening. Perhaps they found a lone sailor, or maybe a small boat of migrants coming from Morocco made an easy target.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attack

There was that recent BBC nature documentary that showed hunting behaviour by Orcas in Antarctica using self created waves to knock seals off ice floes and into the water that also had a "behind the scenes" part after that disturbingly seemed to suggest that the Orcas had a go at the same technique to try to knock the camera crew off their zodiac and into the water.

It's possible that they're capable of recognising intelligence in another species, like we are, so that may just be play... Or they think you might be a seal in a human costume

Or they might be trying to kill. It's not unheard of for nature to attack humans.

Not usually out of desire, dolphins are a little rapey but they think it's a game, orca are more intelligent than dolphins and do not attack unprovoked and even then have proved they will avoid human casualties

False. Killer whales have bitten surfers and generally attacked humans plenty, it’s just that in the wild there hasn’t been any (recorded) fatality. And you can anthropomorphize dolphins all you want but there’s no way to know what an animal’s intentions or understanding are.

Downvotes on recognising something other than human as intelligent says it all - may as well be on reddit, you unenlightened troglodytes.

Humans first made their way into the oceans relatively recently, often in a boat, and extremely late in the Orca's biological evolution.

It wasn't until recently that humans would be numerous enough in the water to be a viable food source for an Orca.

Tweak some things about our evolution and Orcas would kill humans often, sometimes for fun.

Orcas are the Hannibal Lectors of the Sea.

Contrary to sharks, Orca's actually don't have the ability to smell https://www.treehugger.com/surprising-facts-about-orcas-4864...

Aside: In the Links text-only browser, the HTML on www.treehugger.com breaks the a tags so that the href URLs do not work.

Here's a video of wild orcas cautiously playing with a human: https://youtu.be/bTIcQMwYC1o.

The description of the video is worth reading for context.

Very few people are stupid enough to swim with orcas.

They kill blue whales, sperm whales, and great white sharks. The notion that orcas are anything other than apex predators is just silly.

Not only do they kill, they figured out if you flip a shark they'll pass out and they can nibble at leisure, that's a bit more intelligence than "idiots biting rudders" which seems to be the current theory sadly

https://www.sharktrust.org/tonic-immobility

How would they know it's not tasty if they never tasted it ?

Inferrence by smell

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