Unique killer whale pod may have acquired special skills to hunt whale sharks | Hacker News Reader

Unique killer whale pod may have acquired special skills to hunt whale sharks

phys.org

58 pointspseudolus42 comments

I'll say what I always say when seeing things like this: for humans, "dying of natural causes" generally means dying peacefully in your sleep, or quickly of a heart attack or stroke, while for most animals, "dying of natural causes" means getting eaten alive, just praying that it will be over soon. I'll take being human.

it took us a while to get here

maybe whales will be the next animals to start coming ashore? or maybe some cool underwater evolution

Alternatively, friendly humans will undermine the pillars of your life - gutting you in a different way.

I often prefer the honesty of wild animals.

That second video with the snorkelers sidling up to the orcas while they're attacking/feeding -- I know orcas have no record of attacking humans, but that's just a no^100 for me. Who's to say they won't get a little rambunctious in their glee at feeding and use one of the swimmers as a chew toy? Or decide that we might taste funny, but would make an interesting palette cleanser? In some parts of Africa, lions don't usually target humans, but you don't see researchers walking up to lions taking out a zebra like that.

Even within humans it’s socially unacceptable to walk up to people you don’t know you are eating and strike up conversation, eg in a restaurant.

Disturbing eating is a pretty broad no-no across the animal kingdom.

Then again, if the orca wanted you dead, could easily grab you from below in its mouth and pull you down. You’d be dead in 2 mins without much fuss. They’re smart enough to know how to target the right bits. They target baby whales in similar ways, holding them down to drown them. Would be a lot more targeted and cleaner than a shark attack. If they just held a human down might not leave much evidence it was an orca at all.

Orca are known to eat moose and caribou. If an orca was hungry and a human presented an opportunity, it might not end well for the human. Just because we have no evidence of humans being eaten by orca does not mean we're off the menu.

It's like the pop-sci adage that "sharks don't eat humans". It's a wildlife conservation meme that is just not true. While sharks evolved to predate certain classes of prey, they're also opportunistic. Even though our nutrient density and anatomical profile might not match a typical meal, sharks will still eat us. Tiger sharks are notorious for this.

Watch some of https://www.youtube.com/@TheMalibuArtist

I mean these are Great Whites for the most part not Tiger sharks but ... man, I honestly believe that ever single Great White attack was a mistake on the sharks part.

And even for non-humans - there's a great video in there of 4 or 5 sharks all circling a dead or dying seal. One by one they all get in close and then one by one they all take a pass. The seal later washed up on the beach not touched by any shark. The guy behind the video speculated that the seal was poisoned by eating fish infected with a red-tide type bacteria - the sharks just won't touch seal like that.

Are there any definitive reasons as to why killer whales haven’t targeted humans?

It would be kind of pointless. Humans aren't very nutritious. An orca would have to be really starving to resort to hunting humans instead of other prey.

I don't know. They also haven't targeted chimpanzees or gorillas. I feel there could be a deeper reason we're missing!

Do chimps and gorillas regularly swim in seas populated by killer whales?

Killer whales will go after elk and deer (for instance) when the opportunity arises.

Humans in the water also seem like low reward but minimal-effort.

They will kill as play, so I dont think that is it. It could be that we both tase bad and are uninteresting.

To be fair, we only know there are no reported orca attacks. For a report to be filed they’d have to leave witnesses ;).

uh they one thousand percent have

did a killer whale write this

They probably have ancient oral history that that's a bad idea.

Orcas have notoriously selective taste preferences that tend toward nutrient dense fatty foods. They can eat anything and different pods will narrowly specialize in different types of prey, but it is quite apparently a choice based on regional preferences. These food preferences are passed down over generations. Not terribly unlike human cultures.

Orcas are very smart. Humans, even if we met their taste profile, are not a repeatable food source they can specialize in hunting. They may also recognize that eating humans comes with unknown risks because they are pretty observant of what humans are capable of.

> They may also recognize that eating humans comes with unknown risks because they are pretty observant of what humans are capable of.

Idk about that. We have some skills but orcas see basically none of them. From their perspective we are slow and bad swimmers who need to breath all the time.

Would an orca even understand that we made and control boats/ship as opposed to that humans live on boats/ships the same way fleas live on a dog?

Mind you, i’m not saying orcas are stupid. What I’m saying is that the slices of our life they can observe are not impressive, and the impressive things we do are not readily observable to them.

Consider whaling, by killer apes.

Whales probably don't know what apes are, I mean how many live near an ocean?

But we are mammals like them and they'd probably realize the similarity given that we need air. Maybe they'd consider us some kind of killer land whale?

They know what humans are, and certainly have some way of calling us.

I'd imagine they don't consider us any similar to them. But they know those indestructible whale-like surface gliders are shocking full of us, and that we can kill a whale with way more easiness than them.

The probably understand we drive the small boats, and that small boats arejust weird wood logs. I expect them to generalize from there to transatrantics.

Floating objects can carry seals, and orcas can dislodge seals from floating objects by sending large waves in the right direction. They are definitely very interested in the relationship between floating objects and their passengers.

Using some kind of paddle as a method of propulsion should also be a familiar concept to any animal that has flippers.

My understanding from anecdotes[1] is that it's common for dolphins to play with small boats by intentionally getting the humans' attention (e.g. splashing water on them), and a lot of sailors think they understand that humans control the motion of the boat. Though it is sketchy anecdotes.

However, they are almost certainly smart enough to understand how rowboats work and that humans control them. Orcas have been considering human boats for tens of thousands of years and they have human-like cultural transmission of knowledge; perhaps they could quickly adapt what they knew about rowboats to sailboats when those were invented, then motorboats.

[1] E.g. https://www.quora.com/Do-whales-know-that-big-ships-are-cont...

Consider that the whale has something like an ultrasound scanner integrated into it's sensory system. I wouldn't be surprised if the whale knows more about how the boats are built than the humans driving them.

> Would an orca even understand that we made and control boats/ship as opposed to that humans live on boats/ships the same way fleas live on a dog?

The first time they even encounter a boat? Probably not. But I believe they're probably smart enough to make the connection after repeated encounters with boats and humans (which I'm sure they'd notice are nearly always correlated).

It's probably more then just being smart enough to realize that we're not worth the effort - Orca echolocation presumably gives them a comprehensive insight into just what's going on inside us regarding composition.

For them killing sharks I'm sure it wasn't killing a few for kicks until they discovered the liver's were tasty. It was probably more like seeing hamburgers walking around.

During the many shark attacks it's known that they don't find us appealing whether it's the taste or some nutritional aspect. Because after the initial bite they never finish people off even after the person has died.

Could well be that orcas are similar.

Maybe they prefer seafood.

Seriously - food from the sea is different from land animals, not only in taste and texture. We may just seem too foreign to their palette, like snails are for us (pas toi).

Je me suis senti visé

J'ai essaye d'etre discrete.

Didn't help, même moi l'ai compris.

*palate

Thank you. It's too late to edit, but I've learned.

Are seals seafood?

Saltwater crocs bridge the gap! (idk only eaten alligator but it was surprisingly “terrestrial”)

Tasted like chicken?

Maybe it is an instinct, an instinct in the same way we humans tend to not eat rotten meat or maggots in wounds. But humans have not been around for so long so I am not sure how deep such an instinct might be. Maybe it is a preference for "seafood".

Or they understand that we are dangerous to have as enemies. Either through recent observation or through some type of communication that has been passed down through the generations. It is not that long ago since we stoped killing killer whales; less than a hundred years, some of them might have been alive and still remember.

There are records of untrained killer whales hunting together with humans; so some of them certainly understand what we are capable of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tom_(orca)

Some people just smell bad and taste bad.

They have stories about what almost happened to the wales.

Got invaded by the sassenach[1]?

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[1]: Yeah, I know, but I don't know.

It seems there are some reported attacks, but for some reason it’s quite rare (and in many cases we probably deserved it). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attacks

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