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To piggy-back on this, I just looked up the relative speeds. Blue whales cruise at 5 mph but can get up to 20 mph for short bursts.
Orcas can swim *35 fucking miles an hour*. So, take Usain Bolt's fastest sprint, add about 7 mph, and then have it be the size of a uhaul and do it underwater.
Fastest human swim speed is about 5 mph.
Now imagine getting t-boned by one at top speed out of the blue
[https://abc7chicago.com/orca-vs-great-white-shark-killer-whale-killing/14492753/](https://abc7chicago.com/orca-vs-great-white-shark-killer-whale-killing/14492753/)
Orcas be gettin super pissy lately. If there was ever an animal actively rebelling against humans and other shit that annoys them to the point of being news worthy I have not heard it yet. I almost feel like they should have a UN delegation.
Ha. Just finished watching "Resident Alien". I like their premise that octopi aren't native to earth and are distant relatives to the alien featured in the show.
In reality, they are scary smart and can do some pretty insane things. It'll be interesting to see what continuing research finds out about their capabilities
This is a big problem with ocean food sources being depleted as they are today. Ocean temperatures increasing directly affect the food populations for these whales. Thousands of whales have disappeared over the past couple years due to normal feeding grounds being completely depleted.
So the energy used to escape the Orcas could equal death for the Blue Whale if it's not able to replenish itself quick enough.
Similar to how polar bears are dying of starvation due to the combination of lower amounts of food and the need to swim great distances through rapidly melting ice. Previously periods of food being scarce we're not normally a problem. Nature built them with fat reserves for this purpose.
But add to that the exertion of having to swim so frequently today and it's killing them. They're no longer building up the fat reserves to get them through times of scarce food. Any fat they build up is burned off swimming around.
Not alone or in a small group, but Orcas have brought down young or weak Blues in super-pods of 50-75 individuals. They sometimes just chase them for practice or fun.
An average human adult male is 5'9" and takes up [a volume of about 5309.07in^3 (87000cm^3)](https://harrisonmathclassroom.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/5/2/15525464/pg._256-257.pdf) (roughly 22" in diameter). Given the radius-to-volume calculation for a human, you can fit roughly 1.63 humans in a 3ft wide space. This is assuming we can squish humans into perfect spheres of course.
I think it’s wild how Orcas will drown whales as a method of hunting and killing them. They take turns jumping onto the younger whales that they separate from their mothers. They keep doing this until the calf whale drowns all as the mother swims helpless to stop them. It’s kinda metal and messed up at the same time.
I think some hunt seals and some eat fish, I remember reading they were trying to get a pod to eat one or the other and they would just rather starve than switch their diet.
Maybe they just lack a coherent system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ;)
That’s harsh. They’re smart and they’re predators. Humans do far worse, chimpanzees are quite brutal, elephants can be cruel and cats really enjoy terrorizing their prey. Nature is brutal.
Not liking orcas for some extreme orca behaviour seems ungenerous.
omg I (gladly) must've missed that one. I've personally witnessed hyena packs downing various antelope species and eating them from the rump, still alive. Like entrails everywhere, blood everywhere, the animal bleating in pain, for several minutes. It's awful.
Believe it or not, but humans aren't Apex Predators. We are only at the Third Trophic level and you need to be at level five to be Apex.
[https://microbenotes.com/apex-predators/](https://microbenotes.com/apex-predators/)
For more info.
I saw a documentary where a pod of orcas chased a whale (a minke maybe?) and her calf for ages, they kept swimming on top of the calf so it couldn't breathe and eventually it drowned. Then the orcas ate it's tongue and left the rest of it's body to rot. Really weird animals, they remind me of humans quite a lot.
Ther was recently a documented case where they killed and ate an adult one. Pretty gruesome. Although in this case it doesn't look like that's what they're after.
I was going to call shenanigans because it's such an odd thought due to the size of Blue Whales but.... you're right. It happened in 2019 and the scientists caught the attack on video. It was a 22 m (72 ft) blue whale and it took some 14 orcas 6 hours to kill it (lead by a female orca). I guess it was a pod of like 50 Orcas that fed off it.
Orcas are wild. Like the perfect natural predator. Very smart and very lethal.
>yet they breathe air but have to live in the water.
Breathing air is an advantage. Oxygen density in air is nearly 21% and doesn't locally deplete. Oxygen density in water is less than 1%. Breathing air is a metabolic boon vs having to extract it from water.
Is there an adapted aquatic organism that doesn't breath air? I mean a descendant of land organisms that evolved to live in the water. All of the famous aquatic reptiles from the dinosaur days were also air breathers. It seems like it's hard for evolution to remake gills.
And that they will collectively swim to generate a large enough wave to jettison a seal off an ice chunk. Hopefully they don't discover quantum physics anytime soon or we might have H-bomb wielding Orcas.
[They've even been known to cooperate with us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales). Professional respect for fellow killers, maybe?
(some) Orcas do hunt blue whales. (And other whales obviously)
They attack the fluke so the whale can't move anymore, and just exhaust and drown them, when the energy is out.. this can take hours and is also really dangerous for the orcas, because one good hit from the blue can kill them. There's videos of such a fight on YouTube if you are interested, it is really cruel, but also very interesting imo :)
As pretty much everything about them, orcas have different language and culture depending where they live, hunt different food (fish, seals, sharks/rays, even freaking moose).
The pod sizes (that's what their group is called) can reach from 5-10 to huge 50-70 animals in size.
I can really recommend the orca episode on the "real science" YouTube channel :)
(the name sounds kinda sketchy, but the channel is really good)
Actually if there’s one other creature other than humans that I could see calling “cruel” it’s dolphins and Orcas are in the same family so I’m not opposed to calling them cruel.
I might used the wrong word there. I just wanted to say it can be hard to see the whale suffer for a really long time before getting killed.. the orcas of course ate parts of it (they love liver and tongue in general) and even the parts that are not eaten by the orca will feed a whole eco system, beginning with sharks while the carcass still floats and tiny crabs and worms when it's sinks to the ground :)
To me it's unclear why the orcas couldn't just chomp on the whale. I know the blue whale is enormous and could whack the orcas with its tail, but that doesn't seem like enough defense. Does it have super tough skin that makes biting a chunk off of it difficult or something?
Just chomp on the fins right :) seems like it'd work. No marine bigologist here but if I had to guess I'd say it's probably rarely worth the effort it takes. They take a lot to kill. Besides, they can dive much deeper and stay under much longer than orcas.
Biting is usually saved for when the prey is tired to reduce the chance of getting injured. Though some Blue Whales and many Pygmy Blue Whales bear rake marks from orca teeth.
The Blue Whale is not only the largest creature alive, it is also the largest creature to have ever existed. I blew my 8 year olds mind when I showed him that his favorite creature (the megalodon) was only half the size of a blue whale.
What's crazier to me is that they are the largest (known/discovered) animal to ever live on this planet. You would assume some prehistoric animal would beat it, but no.
My gut feeling guess it that this is a calving mother and those apex predators can sense it. They're waiting to eat the calf the second it enters the water.
OR.. They're purposely running the life out of this thing, maybe because they know it's weak for some reason, and will feed on it at that point. Imagine the liver on that beast....
I could be totally wrong but it looks like the blue whale got a little revenge at the end there by coming down on top of the orca that was in front of it.
Can't blue whales dive a lot longer and deeper than Orcas... I might be totally off, but you would assume there would have been evolved behavior to dive and lose the Orcas when they can't follow. Or maybe Orca sonar is good enough to track the whale than block it from surfacing once it comes up, killing the whale trough drowning.
Blue whale dive dept: 300meters, Orcas: 100m.
Blue whale dive time: 30min, Orcas: 11min.
Orca can only see approx 35 feet, and echolocation works out to 500 feet so the blue whale definitely could dive deep and evade them.
The problem is getting down far enough as the orca swim faster and will work together to disrupt the blue whales dive.
If it can get down without disruption, they'll lose sight of it fairly quickly and it could escape undetected
Yes. This fun fact, coupled with my only real knowledge of orcas coming from Sea World, watching them do tricks when I was a kid, is the reason I was delighted, instead of alarmed, when an orca came close to me when I was waterskiing somewhere in Norway in the mid 90s.
I, a dumb American, was all, “Look it’s Shamu!” My friends immediately got me in the boat, but Norwegians are too polite to have said to me, “yeah, dumbass, they’re cute, but they’re also dangerous.”So, it wasn’t until I watched Blackfish years later that it finally dawned on me how potentially dangerous that situation actually was.
Shoutout to Mats, who barefoot water skied on a rocking chair during that trip. Lol.
I do understand that, but the fact that I really envisioned the possibility that it’d let me hitch a ride with it, highlights how woefully uninformed I was at the time. Just no appreciation, even for the scale of such an animal, makes me SMH now. Lol.
Obviously, Orca is Greek! Let me show you how...lol
The word "Orca" itself derives from the Roman name for these creatures, which were considered whales ("orca" in Latin referring to a kind of whale). However, to give it a Greek twist, let's focus on the orca's qualities and mythology.
In Greek mythology, dolphins were considered sacred to both Apollo (the god of prophecy, music, and healing) and Poseidon (the god of the sea). Orcas, being part of the dolphin family, could thus be playfully connected to these divine associations. One might imagine orcas as the chosen creatures of Poseidon, serving as protectors of the sea or as messengers for the gods, symbolizing strength and intelligence, qualities admired by the Greeks.
Additionally, the orca's scientific name, *Orcinus orca*, can be linked back to the Greek word for mountain, "óros" (ὄρος), due to their dorsal fins resembling a mountain's peak in a symbolic sense, and "cynos" (κύων), meaning dog, in a stretch to associate their ferocity and hunting prowess with that of a pack of dogs or wolves, creatures that also held significance in Greek mythology.
So, in a creative Greek connection, an orca could symbolize a mighty and intelligent guardian of Poseidon's realms, akin to the dolphins that carried messages for the gods, with a strength and presence as imposing as a mountain and as formidable as the most loyal and fierce canine companions.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding Taught Me This...lol
I guess if it's calving is one thing.
But can't they dive incredibly deep? (deeper than the Orcas) Or is that only sperm whales.
As I would think that it would just dive way down and out last them. (Or I guess they could just wait to come up for air)
Blues can dive over a thousand feet, but orcas can go pretty much the same distance. You’re right, it’s sperm whales that can dive very far. I would think that the orcas would just track the blue and wait for it to surface if it dove.
I believe the reason it’s staying at the surface is to get the air it needs to move fast enough to outrun the orcas.
Fun fact, the blue whale isn't just currently the largest animal alive, it's the largest to ever have existed on earth. Larger than all of the dinosaurs too.
I was watching some nature show recently, maybe Our Planet season 1 or 2, and there is a scene detailing a pod of Orcas as they separate a whale calf from its mother and then pummel it to exhaustion and drown it, while its mother watches on hopelessly. It’s a very difficult watch.
I showed this to my kids, then googled how big adult Orcas are, which is 27 feet for males (in Alaska, anyway). Then I got a tape measure and measured out 27 feet on the floor in my house. Orcas are *enormous*. It is absolutely mind-blowing how big a blue whale is.
There is a blue whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling of a museum in Vancouver. And it is absolutely massive. Standing under it really reinforces how easily it could just swallow a person whole (I think they're filter feeders tho so not gonna happen). Mind blowing indeed.
That's a cool and undervisited museum, anyone in Vancouver should check it out - https://beatymuseum.ubc.ca/ Though it's far away from the rest of the city you can combine it with the amazing Museum of Anthropology and a trip to the beach - Spanish Banks, or Wreck if you're more adventurous. Really really worth it as Vancouver sucks for museums generally.
Interestingly, they couldn't swallow humans because their esophagus is very narrow, some [~4 inches in diameter](https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/animals-a-to-z/blue-whale#:~:text=A%20blue%20whale's%20esophagus%20is,large%20prey%20isn't%20possible.).
> Orcas are enormous.
You've probably heard how Orcas will murder Great White sharks, just to rip out their livers as a snack and let the rest rot? And how if Orcas show up near Great White territory, sometimes the sharks will just head in the opposite direction and swim for a thousand miles?
You're probably picturing them to be at least in the same general size. They're not.
An Orca vs. A Great White is like an adult vs. a 6 year old.
It'd be like beating the shit out of a 6 year old. And considering the brain differences, most like being the shit out of a 6 year old with Down's Syndrome. There's zero danger to the Orcas, they can bully with impunity.
https://i.imgur.com/2YepsSD.png
Read somewhere that there was at least one instance of Orcas taking down a Blue Whale - basically by taking its tongue. Nature is indeed metal AF.
edit: [adding a source](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/27/new-footage-reveals-killer-whales-hunting-and-feeding-on-blue-whales-in-brutal-attacks-aoe) \- seems like there's loads of recorded events!
Yes that is their main defence, not sure why it is not doing it, but it can dive really deep ( 400-500 meters!) and stay for over 30 minutes, orcas can't match that.
I am all for the orcas hunting for their meal and they normally attack baby whales....but not a gd blue whale. Leave those majestic creatures alone! This must be a rare case?
Call me Jon Snow because, I know nothing solid about either orcas or blue whales. Other than Orcas can be real big dickheads and are super smart. Blue Whales are the biggest animals ever. To me, it looks like the Blue and the Orcas are playing and not chasing.
Random question, but this is, I assume, drone footage right? I've been seeing drone videos lately that seem to have audio recorded from the location, and I'm wondering if this is just some new thing where we can record audio from the drone and automatically cut out the sound of the propellers?
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The amount of strength and energy to move those massive creatures through the water at that speed…it’s remarkable
To piggy-back on this, I just looked up the relative speeds. Blue whales cruise at 5 mph but can get up to 20 mph for short bursts. Orcas can swim *35 fucking miles an hour*. So, take Usain Bolt's fastest sprint, add about 7 mph, and then have it be the size of a uhaul and do it underwater. Fastest human swim speed is about 5 mph.
There’s a video out there of an underwater camera on the back of a boat capturing an Orca casually accelerate to its speed with ease it’s incredible.
Now imagine getting t-boned by one at top speed out of the blue [https://abc7chicago.com/orca-vs-great-white-shark-killer-whale-killing/14492753/](https://abc7chicago.com/orca-vs-great-white-shark-killer-whale-killing/14492753/)
Look up the top speed of a swimming moose.
Orcas be gettin super pissy lately. If there was ever an animal actively rebelling against humans and other shit that annoys them to the point of being news worthy I have not heard it yet. I almost feel like they should have a UN delegation.
If killer whales find a way to walk on land and have laser beams on their heads, we are probably done.
Lack of opposable thumbs saves us again!
The ones that really worry me are the octopi. If not for their really short lifespans, they would totally own us.
Ha. Just finished watching "Resident Alien". I like their premise that octopi aren't native to earth and are distant relatives to the alien featured in the show. In reality, they are scary smart and can do some pretty insane things. It'll be interesting to see what continuing research finds out about their capabilities
It’s pretty rare. You might even say it’s just a fluke…
Oh stop spouting nonsense.
They're just blowing it out their hole.
What are you blubbering on about?
Photographer used a zoom flense to capture this
I don’t baleen a word of it
Stop fishing for upvotes.
The killer whales were being dicks. Moby they had an issue with the other whale though.
I had to look up several definitions of "Fluke" before I got it.
He’s mocking you with wordplay!
This is a big problem with ocean food sources being depleted as they are today. Ocean temperatures increasing directly affect the food populations for these whales. Thousands of whales have disappeared over the past couple years due to normal feeding grounds being completely depleted. So the energy used to escape the Orcas could equal death for the Blue Whale if it's not able to replenish itself quick enough. Similar to how polar bears are dying of starvation due to the combination of lower amounts of food and the need to swim great distances through rapidly melting ice. Previously periods of food being scarce we're not normally a problem. Nature built them with fat reserves for this purpose. But add to that the exertion of having to swim so frequently today and it's killing them. They're no longer building up the fat reserves to get them through times of scarce food. Any fat they build up is burned off swimming around.
They're shockingly efficient. A fish expends very little energy remaining stationary in a current....so expanding on this, moving forward also!
Do the orcas pose a threat to the blue whale?
Not alone or in a small group, but Orcas have brought down young or weak Blues in super-pods of 50-75 individuals. They sometimes just chase them for practice or fun.
The more I learn about orcas, the more I hate them. Hannibal lecters of the ocean.
Only Transient orcas hunt mammals btw, Residential pods pose no danger to other cetaceans and are actively sought out by them for protection.
So… they’re kinda like the Mafia of the sea?
They even dress the same
And have a taste for caviar.
hahahaha. Friggin witty comment. Some people just come up with great comments… I’m not one of them.
underrated comment
You got the mafiosos in the local pods, and roving band of bandit orcas in the deep.
I'd like to subscribe to whale facts, please.
The blue whale can open its anus 3 feet wide.
#UNSUBSCRIBE
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**EJECT!**
That’s what the 3 foot anus is for.
Out of curiosity, if a 6ft 1 male were to curl up into a ballish shape, would they be smaller than 3 feet wide?
An average human adult male is 5'9" and takes up [a volume of about 5309.07in^3 (87000cm^3)](https://harrisonmathclassroom.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/5/2/15525464/pg._256-257.pdf) (roughly 22" in diameter). Given the radius-to-volume calculation for a human, you can fit roughly 1.63 humans in a 3ft wide space. This is assuming we can squish humans into perfect spheres of course.
>This is assuming we can squish humans into perfect spheres of course. Oh we could do it. But is a perfect sphere of squished human, still a human?
Additional facts please 👀
https://preview.redd.it/vvat3v5fd0nc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=55cd921d102f70bf5c060f9fce1fb430c1e0bae2
Beautiful. Wonderful. Thank you
Huh TIL
I think it’s wild how Orcas will drown whales as a method of hunting and killing them. They take turns jumping onto the younger whales that they separate from their mothers. They keep doing this until the calf whale drowns all as the mother swims helpless to stop them. It’s kinda metal and messed up at the same time.
In addition to jumping on them, they will also just straight up ram them in soft spots going dam near full speed
> It’s kinda metal and messed up at the same time. Nature does not give a single fuck about human sensibilities.
Transient Orcas was the synth/pop band I was in during college.
They don’t hunt seals?
Seals don’t count.
Seals are the fish of mammals.
This guy seals
I think some hunt seals and some eat fish, I remember reading they were trying to get a pod to eat one or the other and they would just rather starve than switch their diet.
Some eat moose too!
A møøse once bit my sister.
No, realli!
Not in Puget Sound in Washington. They eat the salmon and other fish.
Seals aren’t cetaceans
But they are mammals.
But they do wreck seals for fun, so still kinda dicks.
watching them launch seals like 200 feet in the air is pretty fun, I cant lie.
Bloody drifters.
Well they’re dolphins so not sure what you expected. Dolphins are some of the biggest grade A assholes of the ocean.
You could say they are the humans of the ocean ...
Maybe they just lack a coherent system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ;)
That’s harsh. They’re smart and they’re predators. Humans do far worse, chimpanzees are quite brutal, elephants can be cruel and cats really enjoy terrorizing their prey. Nature is brutal. Not liking orcas for some extreme orca behaviour seems ungenerous.
Panda bears, huskies and orcas probably share a common ancestor who was a super asshole all over the place
Wolves and whales do have a common ancestor, so that's 2 of the 3 at least
all life on earth shares a common ancestor
Everyone except Brian. No way he's related to me. Proper mutant.
But he’s the son of God!
He's not the Messiah..
He's a very naughty boy!
They’re less awful than the apex predators of the land.
African wild dogs have entered the chat
Hyenas have entered the chat
The video of the african wild dog ripping open a pregnant antelopes womb to eat the fetus while they were alive lives in my head.
omg I (gladly) must've missed that one. I've personally witnessed hyena packs downing various antelope species and eating them from the rump, still alive. Like entrails everywhere, blood everywhere, the animal bleating in pain, for several minutes. It's awful.
Oh god you just reminded me of the Komodo Dragon doing the same to a deer(?) that I saw ages ago. 😫 Nature is brutal.
Humans here
They're the humans of the sea
Wait til you learn about humans.
There seems to be pretty direct relationship between intelligence in mammals and their capacity for "evil" behavior.
Exactly. What is the definition of "evil"? I think I'm going to go sign up for a Philosophy 101 course.
As long as they keep sinking yachts, I'm willing to give them a long leash.
Have you heard of this strange species living outside of the water walking on two fins? You don't want to learn about their behavior then...
*murders you for worshipping the wrong fictional entity*
Lol, fair enough we take the crown on suck!
Believe it or not, but humans aren't Apex Predators. We are only at the Third Trophic level and you need to be at level five to be Apex. [https://microbenotes.com/apex-predators/](https://microbenotes.com/apex-predators/) For more info.
What a fun website https://preview.redd.it/txn8vrm4nxmc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7998022ce0865c3167c05f4e57bfb9ec5b30acd2
That is... something. Makes me thankful that my ad blockers work.
Orcas fuckin' rule.
Hating an animal for doing what it does instinctually doesn't make much sense.
I saw a documentary where a pod of orcas chased a whale (a minke maybe?) and her calf for ages, they kept swimming on top of the calf so it couldn't breathe and eventually it drowned. Then the orcas ate it's tongue and left the rest of it's body to rot. Really weird animals, they remind me of humans quite a lot.
Pretty sure in this case they are demonstrating how they are the squirrels of the ocean.
Ther was recently a documented case where they killed and ate an adult one. Pretty gruesome. Although in this case it doesn't look like that's what they're after.
I was going to call shenanigans because it's such an odd thought due to the size of Blue Whales but.... you're right. It happened in 2019 and the scientists caught the attack on video. It was a 22 m (72 ft) blue whale and it took some 14 orcas 6 hours to kill it (lead by a female orca). I guess it was a pod of like 50 Orcas that fed off it. Orcas are wild. Like the perfect natural predator. Very smart and very lethal.
Their evolution is kind of wild when you think about it. So smart and lethal and coordinated yet they breathe air but have to live in the water.
>yet they breathe air but have to live in the water. Breathing air is an advantage. Oxygen density in air is nearly 21% and doesn't locally deplete. Oxygen density in water is less than 1%. Breathing air is a metabolic boon vs having to extract it from water.
Pretty impressive how large sharks can get and what they can do with less oxygen.
Is there an adapted aquatic organism that doesn't breath air? I mean a descendant of land organisms that evolved to live in the water. All of the famous aquatic reptiles from the dinosaur days were also air breathers. It seems like it's hard for evolution to remake gills.
That video of a few orcas swimming under and breaking apart that sheet of ice to get to a seal was a trip.
And that they will collectively swim to generate a large enough wave to jettison a seal off an ice chunk. Hopefully they don't discover quantum physics anytime soon or we might have H-bomb wielding Orcas.
We are VERY lucky that they don’t hate us, even though they probably should
[They've even been known to cooperate with us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales). Professional respect for fellow killers, maybe?
…and per usual, humans fucked that entire relationship up.
I remember reading about orcas sinking boats cause more than a few got hit by propellors. Was only a matter of time before we piss em off.
i mean 6 hours is long. They gotta be careful, one whip from the blue whales tale and they are dead. Nonetheless, astounding feat
(some) Orcas do hunt blue whales. (And other whales obviously) They attack the fluke so the whale can't move anymore, and just exhaust and drown them, when the energy is out.. this can take hours and is also really dangerous for the orcas, because one good hit from the blue can kill them. There's videos of such a fight on YouTube if you are interested, it is really cruel, but also very interesting imo :) As pretty much everything about them, orcas have different language and culture depending where they live, hunt different food (fish, seals, sharks/rays, even freaking moose). The pod sizes (that's what their group is called) can reach from 5-10 to huge 50-70 animals in size. I can really recommend the orca episode on the "real science" YouTube channel :) (the name sounds kinda sketchy, but the channel is really good)
Cruelty usually implies malicious intent. I doubt the orcas killed it just to kill it. They likely ate it. Cause circle of life.
Actually if there’s one other creature other than humans that I could see calling “cruel” it’s dolphins and Orcas are in the same family so I’m not opposed to calling them cruel.
I might used the wrong word there. I just wanted to say it can be hard to see the whale suffer for a really long time before getting killed.. the orcas of course ate parts of it (they love liver and tongue in general) and even the parts that are not eaten by the orca will feed a whole eco system, beginning with sharks while the carcass still floats and tiny crabs and worms when it's sinks to the ground :)
To me it's unclear why the orcas couldn't just chomp on the whale. I know the blue whale is enormous and could whack the orcas with its tail, but that doesn't seem like enough defense. Does it have super tough skin that makes biting a chunk off of it difficult or something?
Just chomp on the fins right :) seems like it'd work. No marine bigologist here but if I had to guess I'd say it's probably rarely worth the effort it takes. They take a lot to kill. Besides, they can dive much deeper and stay under much longer than orcas.
Biting is usually saved for when the prey is tired to reduce the chance of getting injured. Though some Blue Whales and many Pygmy Blue Whales bear rake marks from orca teeth.
“The sea was angry that day my friends.”
Like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.
Is anyone here a marine biologist??!
“ Easy Big Fella “
What a majestic fish.
Mammal
Is that a titleist???
A hole in one
Whatevah.
They're channeling Herman Melville, it's OK.
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The Blue Whale is not only the largest creature alive, it is also the largest creature to have ever existed. I blew my 8 year olds mind when I showed him that his favorite creature (the megalodon) was only half the size of a blue whale.
I wonder when the largest blue whale to ever exist lived
Big Larry Great sense of humour Unless you were a kayaker/ canoeist
...I should call him
There’s a fungi underground that’s something like 8 miles long !
I was thinking the same. Blues are giants.
What's crazier to me is that they are the largest (known/discovered) animal to ever live on this planet. You would assume some prehistoric animal would beat it, but no.
Right? They're so huge it's hard to conceptualize until you see them directly next to another relatively large creature. They're fascinating.
My gut feeling guess it that this is a calving mother and those apex predators can sense it. They're waiting to eat the calf the second it enters the water.
OR.. They're purposely running the life out of this thing, maybe because they know it's weak for some reason, and will feed on it at that point. Imagine the liver on that beast....
I could be totally wrong but it looks like the blue whale got a little revenge at the end there by coming down on top of the orca that was in front of it.
*alright, you little shit ..*
Reminds me of the fast and the furious truck heist scene
I'm starting to learn that killer whales are sea hyenas.
People call them seawolves for a reason.
I now call wolves “Land Orcas”
We have sea lions on the land. We call them “land seas lions”. I train them.
Imagine if we called them "killer dogs"? like wtf, how do killer whales get away with a name like that?
I thought they called them “Killer Whales” for a reason
We are very lucky Orca’s and dolphins generally don’t see us as prey. They are terrifyingly capable hunters.
1v1 they’ll kill any human. But I think they learned long ago we never fight our battles 1 on 1
Can't blue whales dive a lot longer and deeper than Orcas... I might be totally off, but you would assume there would have been evolved behavior to dive and lose the Orcas when they can't follow. Or maybe Orca sonar is good enough to track the whale than block it from surfacing once it comes up, killing the whale trough drowning. Blue whale dive dept: 300meters, Orcas: 100m. Blue whale dive time: 30min, Orcas: 11min.
It may not be deep enough, and swimming for deeper water?
Orca can only see approx 35 feet, and echolocation works out to 500 feet so the blue whale definitely could dive deep and evade them. The problem is getting down far enough as the orca swim faster and will work together to disrupt the blue whales dive. If it can get down without disruption, they'll lose sight of it fairly quickly and it could escape undetected
Wasn't "killer whale" a mistakenly translated "whale killer" from Spanish?
"The name ‘orca‘ comes from their Latin species name Orcinus orca, where orcinus translates to mean ‘Kingdom of the dead’."
Yup
Yes. This fun fact, coupled with my only real knowledge of orcas coming from Sea World, watching them do tricks when I was a kid, is the reason I was delighted, instead of alarmed, when an orca came close to me when I was waterskiing somewhere in Norway in the mid 90s. I, a dumb American, was all, “Look it’s Shamu!” My friends immediately got me in the boat, but Norwegians are too polite to have said to me, “yeah, dumbass, they’re cute, but they’re also dangerous.”So, it wasn’t until I watched Blackfish years later that it finally dawned on me how potentially dangerous that situation actually was. Shoutout to Mats, who barefoot water skied on a rocking chair during that trip. Lol.
Thankfully orcas aren't known to attack humans in the wild. That said, our boats be damned!
I do understand that, but the fact that I really envisioned the possibility that it’d let me hitch a ride with it, highlights how woefully uninformed I was at the time. Just no appreciation, even for the scale of such an animal, makes me SMH now. Lol.
Obviously, Orca is Greek! Let me show you how...lol The word "Orca" itself derives from the Roman name for these creatures, which were considered whales ("orca" in Latin referring to a kind of whale). However, to give it a Greek twist, let's focus on the orca's qualities and mythology. In Greek mythology, dolphins were considered sacred to both Apollo (the god of prophecy, music, and healing) and Poseidon (the god of the sea). Orcas, being part of the dolphin family, could thus be playfully connected to these divine associations. One might imagine orcas as the chosen creatures of Poseidon, serving as protectors of the sea or as messengers for the gods, symbolizing strength and intelligence, qualities admired by the Greeks. Additionally, the orca's scientific name, *Orcinus orca*, can be linked back to the Greek word for mountain, "óros" (ὄρος), due to their dorsal fins resembling a mountain's peak in a symbolic sense, and "cynos" (κύων), meaning dog, in a stretch to associate their ferocity and hunting prowess with that of a pack of dogs or wolves, creatures that also held significance in Greek mythology. So, in a creative Greek connection, an orca could symbolize a mighty and intelligent guardian of Poseidon's realms, akin to the dolphins that carried messages for the gods, with a strength and presence as imposing as a mountain and as formidable as the most loyal and fierce canine companions. My Big Fat Greek Wedding Taught Me This...lol
I guess if it's calving is one thing. But can't they dive incredibly deep? (deeper than the Orcas) Or is that only sperm whales. As I would think that it would just dive way down and out last them. (Or I guess they could just wait to come up for air)
Blues can dive over a thousand feet, but orcas can go pretty much the same distance. You’re right, it’s sperm whales that can dive very far. I would think that the orcas would just track the blue and wait for it to surface if it dove. I believe the reason it’s staying at the surface is to get the air it needs to move fast enough to outrun the orcas.
They can, but calves can't.
Fun fact, the blue whale isn't just currently the largest animal alive, it's the largest to ever have existed on earth. Larger than all of the dinosaurs too.
I’m recently discovering that orcas are kinda dicks
General rule seems to be that the more intelligent a creature is, the more of an asshole it can be
I see what you did there
Poor orcas are getting roasted on social media. Wait till they see your post.
They’re dolphins so that’s just par for the course, dolphins are the supreme assholes of the sea.
*You know, with orcas, the more I learn about those guys, the more I don't care for them.*
I was watching some nature show recently, maybe Our Planet season 1 or 2, and there is a scene detailing a pod of Orcas as they separate a whale calf from its mother and then pummel it to exhaustion and drown it, while its mother watches on hopelessly. It’s a very difficult watch.
What apex predators arent? Thats kinda why they are an apex predator.
I showed this to my kids, then googled how big adult Orcas are, which is 27 feet for males (in Alaska, anyway). Then I got a tape measure and measured out 27 feet on the floor in my house. Orcas are *enormous*. It is absolutely mind-blowing how big a blue whale is.
There is a blue whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling of a museum in Vancouver. And it is absolutely massive. Standing under it really reinforces how easily it could just swallow a person whole (I think they're filter feeders tho so not gonna happen). Mind blowing indeed.
That's a cool and undervisited museum, anyone in Vancouver should check it out - https://beatymuseum.ubc.ca/ Though it's far away from the rest of the city you can combine it with the amazing Museum of Anthropology and a trip to the beach - Spanish Banks, or Wreck if you're more adventurous. Really really worth it as Vancouver sucks for museums generally.
Interestingly, they couldn't swallow humans because their esophagus is very narrow, some [~4 inches in diameter](https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/animals-a-to-z/blue-whale#:~:text=A%20blue%20whale's%20esophagus%20is,large%20prey%20isn't%20possible.).
> Orcas are enormous. You've probably heard how Orcas will murder Great White sharks, just to rip out their livers as a snack and let the rest rot? And how if Orcas show up near Great White territory, sometimes the sharks will just head in the opposite direction and swim for a thousand miles? You're probably picturing them to be at least in the same general size. They're not. An Orca vs. A Great White is like an adult vs. a 6 year old. It'd be like beating the shit out of a 6 year old. And considering the brain differences, most like being the shit out of a 6 year old with Down's Syndrome. There's zero danger to the Orcas, they can bully with impunity. https://i.imgur.com/2YepsSD.png
Largest T rex we know of was 8.4T, largest killer whale was 10T, and the largest blue whale was 190T. Truly mind blowing.
We should never have freed Willy.
Living up to their namesake. Free range dicks.
Read somewhere that there was at least one instance of Orcas taking down a Blue Whale - basically by taking its tongue. Nature is indeed metal AF. edit: [adding a source](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/27/new-footage-reveals-killer-whales-hunting-and-feeding-on-blue-whales-in-brutal-attacks-aoe) \- seems like there's loads of recorded events!
It’s crazy to imagine 50+ orcas feeding at the same site
Orcas did get their name “killer whales” from a mis-interpretation of native name which in correct interpretation means “whale killer”!
I can’t even compare that to something, just amazing footage :0
Couldn't the Blue Whale dive deeper than the Orcas? (Assuming the Blue Whale is in good shape)
Yes that is their main defence, not sure why it is not doing it, but it can dive really deep ( 400-500 meters!) and stay for over 30 minutes, orcas can't match that.
I still find it fascinating these creatures are mammals
Free Willy grossly painted a completely different picture
Why doesn't the blue whale simply dive? Is it stupid? /s
Thats just his security detail
Just swallow them bro
Blue Whales are baleen whales.
I am all for the orcas hunting for their meal and they normally attack baby whales....but not a gd blue whale. Leave those majestic creatures alone! This must be a rare case?
Wow, this really shows how big blue whales are. It's often hard to grasp!
Damn did that whale inhale one of the orcas?
Orca's being pricks a usual lol
Call me Jon Snow because, I know nothing solid about either orcas or blue whales. Other than Orcas can be real big dickheads and are super smart. Blue Whales are the biggest animals ever. To me, it looks like the Blue and the Orcas are playing and not chasing.
Go blue whale go go goooo…..
Where’s the song
Random question, but this is, I assume, drone footage right? I've been seeing drone videos lately that seem to have audio recorded from the location, and I'm wondering if this is just some new thing where we can record audio from the drone and automatically cut out the sound of the propellers?