WAR AT SEA
Killer whales attack sailboats during race: "Scary moment"



Kerry Breen
Fri, June 23, 2023 

Two sailing teams competing in a round-the-world race had a scary encounter with a pod of orcas on Thursday afternoon, race officials said.

The two teams are competing as part of The Ocean Race, an international competition that also works to gather climate data. The race has seven stretches across the world, but the two boats who encountered the killer whales are participating in a smaller three-leg version of the competition, called The Ocean Race VO65 Sprint.

One boat was crewed by Team JAJO, a group from Amsterdam. The other is crewed by Mirpuri Trifork Racing, a team from Portugal. The boats were traveling through the Atlantic Ocean to the west of Gibraltar when the encounter happened at around 2:50 local time, the organization said in a news release.

An orca interacts with a boat in The Ocean Race. 

/ Credit: Brend Schuil / Team JAJO / The Ocean Race

Jelmar van Beek, skipper of the JAJO Team, reported that there were multiple orcas involved. Both teams said that there was no damage to the boats and reported there were no injuries, but said the orcas had pushed up against the boat and nudged and bitten at the rudders. In one case, an orca rammed the boat.

"20 minutes ago we got hit by some orcas," said Team JAJO skipper Jelmer van Beek in a news release. "Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team. We took down the sails and slowed down the boat as quickly as possible and luckily after a few attacks they went away… This was a scary moment."



The incident comes amid reports of seemingly coordinated attacks on boats by orcas. Multiple such incidents have been reported around Gibraltar, which neighbors Spain. Incidents where orcas have worked individually or in a pod to ram a boat's hull or rudders have tripled in the past two years, researchers have said, but it's not clear why. Between July and November 2020, there were 52 such interactions recorded by GTOA, a group that studies orcas in the Gibraltar area. In 2022, there were 207 such interactions. In at least three cases, the damage has resulted in sinking, The Ocean Race said.

A boat captain who was attacked twice by orcas, once in 2020 and once in 2022, told Newsweek that the whales seemed to have a plan.

"First time, we could hear them communicating under the boat," he told Newsweek. "This time, they were quiet, and it didn't take them that long to destroy both rudders. ... Looks like they knew exactly what they are doing. They didn't touch anything else."

CLASS CONSCIOUS

Orca Rams Into Yacht Near Scotland As Boat-Bashing Behavior Seems To Spread North

Hilary Hanson

HUFFPOST
Thu, June 22, 2023

A man sailing a yacht in the North Sea near Scotland’s Shetland Islands said that an orca repeatedly rammed into his boat earlier this week, exhibiting behavior that’s been recently seen in killer whales farther south.

Retired Dutch physicist Dr. Wim Rutten was alone on a 7-ton yacht on Monday when an orca smacked into the boat’s stern, then circled back to hit it again and again “at fast speed,” he told The Guardian.

An orca seen off the coast of California.

The published Guardian interview did not mention any permanent damage to the vessel, just “soft shocks” felt through the hull.

“Maybe he just wanted to play,” Rutten, who was mackerel fishing when the orca showed up, speculated. “Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line.”

His account bore a striking similarity to dozens of incidents reported this year in waters near Portugal and Spain. Last month, orcas broke the rudder and pierced the hull of a sailing boat near the coast of southern Spain, necessitating a rescue team to tow the vessel to a port. Three weeks prior, also off the Spanish coast, an orca trio rammed into and ultimately sank a yacht. No human deaths have occurred in any of the reported incidents.

Dr. Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist who authored a paper published last year on the phenomenon, believes the incidents originated with a female orca known to scientists as White Gladis. The theory goes that White Gladis had a traumatic encounter involving a boat and started to behave defensively against other boats, and her fellow orcas picked up the behavior.

Not all scientists agree that’s what likely happened, though.

“What I think is probably happening is it’s a playful behavior. It’s a social behavior,” Dr. Deborah Giles, science director at research and advocacy group Wild Orca, told Vice News.

Giles suspects a young orca started playfully ramming boats, and others followed suit.

Aside from the behavior’s origin, another question is whether it’s now spreading to northern waters or is arising there independently.

Orca researcher Dr. Conor Ryan told The Guardian that it’s plausible that “highly mobile” orca pods are spreading the behavior northward.

“It’s possible that this ‘fad’ is leapfrogging through the various pods/communities,” he said.

The incidents have inspired a huge amount of largely supportive jokes and memes about an orca uprising. But Monica Bacchus, marine programs coordinator at National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Killer Whale Research and Conservation Program, told Vice that she doesn’t think what’s happening is an actual cetacean revolution. But she does find the phenomenon intriguing.

She said, “It’s always cool to see animals do new things.”

Orcas off coast of Scotland repeatedly ram yacht

Joe Pinkstone

TELEGRAPH
Wed, June 21, 2023 

An orca pod off the coast of Scotland that may be the one that attacked a lone sailor off Shetland - Killer Whales / Orca Pod

A killer whale has repeatedly rammed a yacht off the coast of Scotland, it has emerged, in an attack reminiscent of those seen 3,000 miles further south near Gibraltar.

The orca is said to have made contact with a small boat off the Shetland coast in the North sea as a solo sailor embarked on a trip from Lerwick to Bergen, Norway.

Dr Wim Rutten, 72, is a retired scientist and told The Guardian he saw the whale come up through the water and repeatedly, and deliberately, collide with his boat. The most frightening aspect of the ordeal, he claims, was not the several shocks from the impacts but the “very loud breathing of the animal”.


He claims the orca was “looking for the keel” after its initial barrage before vanishing back into the water before mounting numerous follow-up attacks afterwards and circling the seven-tonne yacht. “Maybe he just wanted to play. Or look me in the eyes. Or to get rid of the fishing line,” he told the newspaper.

The reported attack in British waters comes after several tales of orcas attacking boats around Gibraltar and the Iberian peninsula.

A pair of orcas about to ram the stern of a boat - BNPS

Orcas are highly intelligent social creatures that live in pods and are capable of communicating with each other to share information. They hunt in coordinated movements with specific tactics but the reasoning for the attacks on boats remains unknown.

Some scientists have posited that this behaviour is merely young, adolescent killer whales playing, while others think they hone in on boats with a fishing line attached, as Dr Rutten had while hoping to hook a mackerel on his trip.

However, the apparent focus on the rudders of boats has led some experts to suggest the attacks are a deliberate technique learnt over time to disable the boat.

The Scottish attack has raised questions over how and why an orca is engaging with boats so far north. Although killer whales are often seen around northern Scotland, they are a completely different group and pod to their counterparts around Gibraltar that made headlines earlier this year for their assaults.

“It’s possible that this ‘fad’ is leapfrogging through the various pods/communities,” Dr Conor Ryan, a scientific adviser to the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, told The Guardian. He added that some pods are particularly mobile and they may have spread this information 3,000 miles from the mouth of the Mediterranean to Shetland’s waters.

Gladis, a particularly vindictive killer whale in the Gibraltar Strait, is thought to be teaching other members of her species how to attack yachts. It is thought Gladis is enacting her revenge on various yachts after a previous collision with a boat, or perhaps a scarring encounter with illegal fishing nets.

During the attacks the orcas always appear to be targeting the rudder of the boat, as if to disable it - BNPS

The matriarch has now educated the rest of her pod and they are now also thought to be ramming vessels with the aim of sinking them.

On May 2, six of the apex predators slammed into the hull of a Bavaria 46 yacht, which was sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar, near Tangier in Morocco. The hour-long attack left Cambridge couple Janet Morris, 58, a business consultant, and Stephen Bidwell, 58, a photographer, who were on board for a sailing course, in awe.

Mr Bidwell told The Telegraph it was “daunting” and added there was “a clearly larger matriarch” seemingly supervising the attack, which may have been Gladis. The trend towards targeting boats has led to sailors making adaptations to their boats in an attempt to protect themselves.

Bags of sand are now being carried aboard after hundreds of boats were damaged in the Strait and three sunk in the last three years, normally through headbutting the rudder to its destruction. Sand, when sprinkled in the water pre- or mid-attack, is said to confuse the cetacean sonar system and a few kilograms dropped overboard to create an “acoustic mirror effect”.

Relentless Orca Repeatedly Rams Yacht



Frank Landymore

FUTURISM
Thu, June 22, 2023

Things Go North

An orca repeatedly slammed into a yacht sailing in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland earlier this week, marking the first orca attack in northern waters.

In other words, the recent onslaught of orca attacks on ships, it seems, could be spreading.

"What I felt [was] most frightening was the very loud breathing of the animal," Wim Rutten, a retired Dutch physicist who was captaining the ship, told The Guardian.

The orca rammed the boat over and over, sending "soft shocks" through the hull. Once it stopped its assault, the whale dropped back and ominously trailed the vessel, "looking for the keel."

The whale "disappeared," Rutten described, "but came back at fast speed, twice or thrice… and circled a bit."

Attacking Spree

Killer whales have been terrorizing sailors for over a month. But until now, most if not all of the dozens of recent orca attacks on boats have been roughly contained to the seas south of Spain, in an area known as the Strait of Gibraltar.

Recently released footage shows an orca slamming into a sailboat off Spain's southern coast, damaging the hull and forcing sailors to pump water out of the boat.

The behavior is as unusual as it is terrifying. Until aggressive encounters were first documented back in 2020, orcas had been rarely known to approach, let alone attack, humans or their vessels. It was only in recent months that those burgeoning encounters escalated to sinking ships.

Orcas, like many whales, are incredibly social and intelligent creatures. Scientists suspect that the behavior is being taught by adults to their pods, and then spreading. The behavior moving from the Strait of Gibraltar all the way north of Scotland is quite a stretch, but some scientists say it's entirely possible.

"I'd be reluctant to say it cannot be learned from [the southern population]," Conor Ryan, a marine biologist and a scientist advisor for the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, told The Guardian.

"It's possible that this 'fad' is leapfrogging through the various pods/communities."
Just a Phase

As for the origin of the orca behavior and the intentions behind it, scientists have several theories. It could be that this is just an apex predator's idea of having fun. Rutten himself said it was possible the orca "just wanted to play."

Another prevailing theory is that this originated as an act of revenge, but some experts dispute this thinking.

As Ryan alluded to earlier, this could simply be a behavioral "fad." How long it will stay in fashion, though, remains to be seen.

More on orcas: Captain Attacked Twice by Orcas Says They're Developing Better Anti-Boat Strategies

Stop calling the killer whale encounters with boats 'attacks'

Kelsey Vlamis
Tue, June 27, 2023

Two Southern Resident killer whales.David K. Ellifrit/Center for Whale Research, permit number: NMFS 21238.

Killer whales near the Iberian Peninsula have been striking boats since 2020.


No doubt the encounters feel like attacks to the boaters, but experts say that may not be accurate.


The orcas are probably just playing so calling them "attacks" might be misleading.

"Killer Whale Attacks!" sure makes for a great headline, but it may not be quite accurate when used to describe the encounters between orcas and boats that have been taking place near the Iberian Peninsula in recent years.

Hundreds of these encounters have been documented off the southern coasts of Spain and Portugal since 2020. Researchers say they typically follow a similar pattern: an orca approaches a boat from behind and strikes its rudder repeatedly, sometimes until it is broken and the boat is immobilized. Most encounters end with minimal damage and no humans have been injured in one of these interactions.

But in at least three cases the killer whales have managed to sink sailboats, prompting talk of an "orca uprising" in which the whales were finally fighting back.

"Undoubtedly the people on board these little boats feel attacked," Andrew Trites, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia in Canada, previously told Insider. Still, he thinks it's unlikely that "attack" is an accurate description of what's going on.

Despite one theory about a "traumatized" killer whale seeking revenge on boats, Trites and other experts have said they believe the orcas are most likely just playing. They appear to be picking up and mimicking the play behavior of other killer whales, suggesting it is being positively reinforced, or that they are getting pleasure or some sort of benefit from it.

Trites said he was also concerned that framing the encounters as "attacks" could lead to misunderstandings about killer whales, not dissimilar to the fear of great white sharks inspired by a certain Hollywood movie that changed many people's impressions of the ocean forever.

Other experts, as well as a ship captain whose boat was targeted by an orca, have worried that the "attack" framing could lead scared boaters to take matters into their own hands and start shooting whales, which feeds into another potentially misleading aspect of describing these interactions as "attacks" — in all likelihood, the whales are more likely to get injured or killed in these encounters than the humans.

So, instead of using the word attack, which implies aggressive and violent action, it might be more accurate to simply describe the literal behavior that the orcas are engaging in: such as striking, ramming, targeting, or hitting boats.

Orca attacking boats are ‘playing games for adrenaline rush’

Miriam Burrell
Tue, 27 June 2023 

Orca attacking boats are ‘playing games for adrenaline rush’


Orca carrying out attacks on sail boats off the coast of Spain are doing it for an “adrenaline shot”, a researcher has said.

The attacks began in 2020 and at least 130 incidents have spooked sailors since, according to Spanish reports.

Last month, British sailors had to be rescued after the animals wrecked the hull of their yacht off the coast of Gibraltar and the boat started sinking.

In a nail-biting video, April Boyes, on board the vessel, can be heard saying: “Jesus, oh my God,” as each thud causes more damage to the boat, eventually destroying the rudder and piercing the hull.

Last Thursday, Dutch sailing team Team JAJO fell victim to an attack in the Atlantic Ocean to the west of Gibraltar while competing in The Ocean Race.

But a marine biologist, who Spanish authorities have commissioned to investigate the orcas’ behaviour, said they are ramming boats for fun and not out of malicious motives.

Renaud de Stephanis told El Mundo that what the animals are looking for is a reaction to their game, to give them “a kind of beastly adrenaline shot”.

“Don’t ask me how they started it because I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone ever will. What we do think is that it is a simple game for them,” he said.

Mr de Stephanis is completing a report on the orcas that will be given to the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition, in a bid to prevent further boat rescues.

He said: “If two or three killer whales really attacked a sailboat, they would sink it in a matter of seconds. We as humans can tell that it is an attack.

“But without wanting to make the matter less serious, a furious attack by that animal can have much worse consequences for a boat and for whoever is on board than a mere feeling of fear for a few minutes, until they leave.”

The orca thought to be initiating the playful attacks has a deep scar on its back, suspected to be caused by hitting an engine propeller.

“We believe that she is at the origin of everything,” Mr Stephanis told El Mundo.

“Today she is a subjuvenile orca. She belongs to a family of seven members and as far as we know, she is the most active of all.”

Underwater cameras have helped researchers capture numerous videos of the orcas since the incidents began in 2020.

One animal has been tagged with a geolocation system, which provides teams with satellite coverage for around 10 hours a day.

HINT; WARMING OCEANS

Orcas sink a sailboat and ram another on the same morning. Scientists look for answers, reports say
jzitser@businessinsider.com (Joshua Zitser) - 

© Getty ImagesStock photo of a pod of orcas swimming near a boat. 

A group of orcas attacked a small sailboat off Portugal's coast, causing it to sink, per reports.
Shortly after, orcas rammed into another small vessel nearby.

Scientists are investigating why so many killer whale attacks are happening in the area.

A pod of orcas attacked a sailboat off the coast of Portugal on July 31 and, just hours later, targeted another vessel in the same area, according to reports.

The first incident, which local media described as "very much worse than usual," saw orcas ram a small sailboat carrying five people approximately seven miles off the coast of Sines, Portugal.

Orca attacks have sometimes immobilized sailboats, but local media said that, in this instance, it caused so much damage that the vessel started to sink.

The five crew members, who were on vacation, per The Sun, made it onto life rafts and radioed for help. A nearby fishing vessel was able to rescue them, according to a statement by the Portuguese Navy.

Unusually, another orca attack took place nearby just a few hours later.

Newsweek reported that the second orca attack involved a small sailboat with two passengers aboard.

The passengers, who were sleeping at the time of the attack, were traveling from Lisbon to the Algarve, per the local media outlet Portugal Resident.

The orcas, which can grow up to 26 feet long, struck the boat and bit the rudder, immobilizing it, the Portugal Resident said. It was towed to the dry dock.

According to the Portugal Resident, more than 200 attacks by orcas against vessels have been recorded along Portugal and Spain's Iberian Peninsula since 2020.


Orca (Southern Resident Killer Whales) in the Pacific Northwest. 

Monika Wieland Shields/Shutterstock

Scientists are looking into the growing number of orca attacks, the media outlet said, to determine if the killer whales are acting out of curiosity, mischief, or revenge.

Insider previously reported in 2020 about a series of aggressive actions by orcas along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. At the time, experts told The Observer that the killer whales might have been mounting deliberate attacks, perhaps indicating high levels of stress.

It Turns Out Orcas Can — And Do — Kill And Eat Blue Whales

Hilary Hanson

Sat, January 29, 2022

Its sheer size apparently isn’t enough to save a blue whale from becoming dinner for a hungry pod of orcas (aka killer whales).

In a paper published last week in the journal Marine Mammal Science, researchers shared “the first documentation of killer whales killing and eating blue whales: two individuals killed, 16 days apart in 2019, and a third in 2021.”

In the past, there have been reports of orcas chasing blue whales, but this the first official scientific record of orcas successfully hunting, killing and eating them, according to The Guardian.

The incidents all happened in Australia’s Bremer Bay, where female-led orca groups worked together to take down their large prey.

In two of the three cases, the blue whales — which are the largest animals on Earth — weren’t fully grown: one was a young calf and one was a juvenile around a year old. But the third blue whale the orcas ate was a healthy adult between 60 and 70 feet long, more than twice the size of the largest orcas, which only get to be about 30 feet, according to National Geographic.

“When we arrived about 14 killer whales were attacking the blue in [230-ft deep] waters, with the female killer whales leading the attack,” Isabella Reeves, a PhD candidate at Australia’s Flinders University and one of the study’s authors, told New Atlas.

That attack involved some of the orcas repeatedly slamming into the blue whale and biting off chunks of its flesh, while others went for its head and still another took the liberty of going for the tongue ― a nutrient-dense organ that orcas apparently love. Ultimately, about 50 orcas joined in the smorgasbord.

While you may have trouble convincing a blue whale of this, the researchers believe that the orca attacks may actually be a positive sign overall, indicating that blue whale numbers are rebounding after being driven to near-extinction by the whaling industry in the early 20th century.

“Maybe what we’re starting to see now is how the ocean used to be before we took out most of the large whales,” Robert Pitman, an ecologist at Oregon State University and another of the study’s authors, told The Guardian. “As some of these populations continue to recover, we have a better chance to see how normal marine ecosystems function.”

In the meantime, orcas aren’t the only animals enjoying the feast, Gizmodo reported. In the case of the adult whale, the carcass also became a buffet for sharks and scavenging seabirds.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Orcas Are Able to Kill and Eat Blue Whales, Scientists Confirm

Annie Roth

Sat, January 29, 2022, 

In March 2019, scientists studying whales near southwestern Australia stumbled on a supersize spectacle that few had seen before — a pod of orcas viciously attacking a blue whale.

Over a dozen orcas surrounded the mighty animal. They had already bitten off its dorsal fin, and the animal was unable to evade the fast and agile predators. The water ran red with the blood of the massive creature, and chunks of its flesh were floating all around. The scientists observed one orca force its way into the blue whale’s mouth and feast on its tongue. It took an hour for the orcas to kill the blue whale, and once they did, about 50 other orcas showed up to devour the carcass.

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Orcas, also known as killer whales despite being members of the same family as dolphins, are apex predators known to feed on nearly every species of large whale. But they typically go after calves rather than adults. This was the first time orcas had been observed successfully killing and eating an adult blue whale.

The attack was the first of three such events that were witnessed from 2019 through 2021. These events, described in a paper published last week in the journal Marine Mammal Science, have put to rest a long-standing debate among scientists about whether orcas could make a meal out of an adult blue whale.

A pod of orcas taking down a blue whale is “the biggest predation event on Earth, maybe the biggest one since dinosaurs were here,” said Robert Pitman, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University and an author of the paper.

Anecdotal evidence that orcas are capable of making a meal out of an adult blue whale has long existed, but it wasn’t until 2019 that scientists were able to confirm this through firsthand observation.

“Upon approach, we were astounded at what we were seeing,” said Rebecca Wellard, founder and lead researcher at Project ORCA, who was among the researchers who witnessed the 2019 attack. “When you come across a unique event like this, I think it takes a while to process just what you are seeing.”

Blue whales, the largest creatures that have ever lived, can grow up to 110 feet in length, but the animal being attacked was only 70 feet long, which raised questions about whether it was a younger blue whale. But Wellard and her team were able to photograph the blue whale before the orcas tore it to shreds. Based on its appearance, as well as the location and time of year it was photographed, they concluded that it was an adult pygmy blue whale, a subspecies that is genetically similar to the most massive of the blue whales, but with a smaller size and other distinguishing characteristics.

Pygmy blue whales reach lengths of up to 79 feet, so this animal was most likely an adult.

“I think a full-grown pygmy blue whale could be mistaken for a regular blue whale that was not quite mature,” said Erich Hoyt, a research fellow with Whale and Dolphin Conservation and author of “Orca: The Whale Called Killer.” He was not involved in the research.

Hoyt said the fact that the orcas were able to successfully hunt the pygmy blue whale served as strong evidence that they could do the same to even the most massive blue whales. “Blue whales are fast, but orcas are faster,” he said.

The event that Wellard and her team witnessed took place off the coast of Bremer Bay, a biologically rich region where large numbers of orcas, blue whales and other cetaceans can be seen during certain times of the year.

“The killer whales we research off Bremer Bay are rewriting the textbook on what we thought we knew about this species,” Wellard said.

Photographers aboard whale-watching boats in the region have documented two other orca attacks on blue whales since the attack observed in 2019. Over a dozen orcas coordinated to carry out both attacks on juvenile blue whales. While scientists had observed orcas with dead blue whale calves in the past, such attacks had not yet been documented from start to finish.

Although the predation of blue whales by orcas is gruesome, scientists say it could be a positive sign for the health of whale species in the area. The whaling industry nearly drove blue whales into extinction, and the fact that enough of them now exist to be preyed on by orcas may hint at population growth.

“What we could be seeing now is a return to ‘normalcy’ as populations of large whales, and their predators, continue to recover,” Wellard said. “It may just have been a matter of time before an observation like this was made. Nonetheless, these hunts signal a positive step for both species’ populations.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Orcas are learning terrifying new behaviors. Are they getting smarter?

By Sascha Pare 

From sinking boats and feasting on shark livers to dining on whale tongue and tossing porpoises around for fun, orcas are displaying some fascinating — and sometimes terrifying — behaviors

Orcas (Orcinus orca) are apex predators that can take on prey much larger than themselves. (Image credit: The Asahi Shimbun Premium via Getty Images)

In March 2019, researchers off the coast of southwestern Australia witnessed a gruesome scene: a dozen orcas ganging up on one of the biggest creatures on Earth to kill it. The orcas devoured huge chunks of flesh from the flanks of an adult blue whale, which died an hour later. This was the first-ever documented case of orca-on-blue-whale predation, but it wouldn't be the last.

In recent months, orcas (Orcinus orca) have also been spotted abducting baby pilot whales and tearing open sharks to feast on their livers. And off the coast of Spain and Portugal, a small population of orcas has begun ramming and sinking boats.

All of these incidents show just how clever these apex predators are.

"These are animals with an incredibly complex and highly evolved brain," Deborah Giles, an orca researcher at the University of Washington and the nonprofit Wild Orca, told Live Science. "They've got parts of their brain that are associated with memory and emotion that are significantly more developed than even in the human brain."

But the scale and novelty of recent attacks have raised a question: Are orcas getting smarter? And if so, what's driving this shift?

They've got parts of their brain that are associated with memory and emotion that are significantly more developed than even in the human brain.

It's not likely that orcas' brains are changing on an anatomical level, said Josh McInnes, a marine ecologist who studies orcas at the University of British Columbia. "Behavioral change can influence anatomical change in an animal or a population" — but only over thousands of years of evolution, McInnes told Live Science.

Related: Scientists investigate mysterious case of orca that swallowed 7 sea otters whole

But orcas are fast learners, which means they can and do teach each other some terrifying tricks, and thus become "smarter" as a group. Still, some of these seemingly new tricks may in fact be age-old behaviors that humans are only documenting now. And just like in humans, some of these learned behaviors become trends, ebbing and flowing in social waves.

Frequent interactions with humans through boat traffic and fishing activities may also drive orcas to learn new behaviors. And the more their environment shifts, the faster orcas must respond and rely on social learning to persist.

Teaching hunting strategies

Orcas (Orcinus orca) attacked an adult blue whale off the coast of Australia and inserted their heads inside the whale's mouth to feed on its tongue. (Image credit: John Totterdell)

There's no question that orcas learn from each other. Many of the skills these animals teach and share relate to their role as highly evolved apex predators.

Scientists described orcas killing and eating blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) for the first time in a study published last year. In the months and years that followed the first attack in March 2019, orcas preyed on a blue whale calf and juvenile in two additional incidents, pushing the young blue whales below the surface to suffocate them.

This newly documented hunting behavior is an example of social learning, with strategies being shared and passed on from adult orcas to their young, Robert Pitman, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute, told Live Science in an email. "Anything the adults learn will be passed along" from the dominant female in a pod to her offspring, he said.

Taking down a blue whale "requires cooperation and coordination," Pitman said. Orcas may have learned and refined the skills needed to tackle such enormous prey in response to the recovery of whale populations from whaling. This know-how was then passed on, until the orcas became highly skilled at hunting even the largest animal on Earth, Pitman said.

Old tricks, new observations

Some of the gory behaviors researchers have observed recently may actually be long-standing habits.

For instance, during the blue whale attacks, observers noted that the orcas inserted their heads inside live whales' mouths to feed on their tongues. But this is probably not a new behavior — just a case of humans finally seeing it up close.

"Killer whales are like humans in that they have their 'preferred cuts of meat,'" Pitman said. "When preying on large whales, they almost always take the tongue first, and sometimes that is all they will feed on."

Tongue is not the only delicacy orcas seek out. Off the coast of South Africa, two males — nicknamed Port and Starboard — have, for several years, been killing sharks to extract their livers.

Killer whales are like humans in that they have their 'preferred cuts of meat.'

Although the behavior surprised researchers at first, it's unlikely that orcas picked up liver-eating recently due to social learning, Michael Weiss, a behavioral ecologist and research director at the Center for Whale Research in Washington state, told Live Science.

Related: Orcas attacked a great white shark to gorge on its liver in Australia, shredded carcass suggests

That's because, this year, scientists also captured footage of orcas slurping down the liver of a whale shark off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. The likelihood that Port and Starboard transferred their know-how across thousands of miles of ocean is vanishingly small, meaning liver-eating is probably a widespread and established behavior.

"Because there are more cameras and more boats, we're starting to see these behaviors that we hadn't seen before," Weiss said.

Sharing scavenging techniques

Orcas master and share more than hunting secrets. Several populations worldwide have learned to poach fish caught for human consumption from the longlines used in commercial fisheries and have passed on this information.

In the southern Indian Ocean, around the Crozet Islands, two orca populations have increasingly scavenged off longlines since fishing in the region expanded in the 1990s. By 2018, the entire population of orcas in these waters had taught one another to feast on longline buffets, with whole groups that previously foraged on seals and penguins developing a taste for human-caught toothfish.

Sometimes, orcas' ability to quickly learn new behaviors can have fatal consequences. In Alaska, orcas recently started dining on groundfish caught by bottom trawlers, but many end up entangled and dead in fishing gear.

"This behavior may be being shared between individuals, and that's maybe why we're seeing an increase in some of these mortality events," McInnes said.

Playing macabre games

Orcas' impressive cognitive abilities also extend to playtime.

Giles and her colleagues study an endangered population of salmon-eating orcas off the North Pacific coast. Called the Southern Resident population, these killer whales don't eat mammals. But over the past 60 years, they have developed a unique game in which they seek out young porpoises, with the umbilical cords sometimes still attached, and play with them to death.

Related: 'An enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth': How orcas gained their 'killer' reputation

There are 78 recorded incidents of these orcas tossing porpoises to one another like a ball but not a single documented case of them eating the small mammals, Giles said. "In some cases, you'll see teeth marks where the [killer] whale was clearly gently holding the animal, but the animal was trying to swim away, so it's scraping the skin."

The researchers think these games could be a lesson for young orcas on how to hunt salmon, which are roughly the same size as baby porpoises. "Sometimes they'll let the porpoise swim off, pause, and then go after it," Giles said.
Are humans driving orcas to become "smarter"?

Humans may indirectly be driving orcas to become smarter, by changing ocean conditions, McInnes said. Orca raids on longline and trawl fisheries show, for example, that they innovate and learn new tricks in response to human presence in the sea.

Human-caused climate change may also force orcas to rely more heavily on one another for learning.

In Antarctica, for instance, a population of orcas typically preys on Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) by washing them off ice floes. But as the ice melts, they are adapting their hunting techniques to catch leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) and crabeater seals (Lobodon carcinophaga) — two species that don't rely on ice floes as much and are "a little bit more feisty," requiring orcas to develop new skills, McInnes said.

While human behaviors can catalyze new learning in orcas, in some cases we have also damaged the bonds that underpin social learning. Overfishing of salmon off the coast of Washington, for example, has dissolved the social glue that keeps orca populations together.

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"Their social bonds get weaker because you can't be in a big partying killer-whale group if you're all hungry and trying to search for food," Weiss said. As orca groups splinter and shrink, so does the chance to learn from one another and adapt to their rapidly changing ecosystem, Weiss said.

And while orcas probably don't know that humans are to blame for changes in their ocean habitat, they are "acutely aware that humans are there," McInnes said.

Luckily for us, he added, orcas don't seem interested in training their deadly skills on us.

11 ways orcas show their terrifying intelligence

By Patrick Pester

 published 1 day ago

Orcas have their own dialect, greeting ceremonies and even wore salmon as hats in a weird fad during the 1980s.

Two orca swimming underwater. (Image credit: TanKr via Shutterstock)

Orcas are one of the most successful species in the seas, reigning at the top of the food chain in every ocean. And one of the reasons they are so successful is simple: they're really, really clever.

Orcas (Orcinus orca) have rich and distinct social lives and have learned a remarkable variety of hunting strategies to take down everything from blue whales to great white sharks. Here are 10 examples of orca intelligence that prove killer whales are killer smart.

Related: Orcas are learning terrifying new behaviors. Are they getting smarter?

They get caught up in fads

Orcas are social learners and occasionally get caught up in fads — a temporary behavior started by one or two individuals, adopted by others and then swiftly abandoned. For example, a population in the Pacific went through a phase of wearing salmon as hats in the 1980s. The trend started when a female orca began carrying around dead salmon on her head, and in the weeks that followed, the behavior spread to two other pods in the same community.

Researchers spotted the salmon-wearing orcas doing the same behavior the following year and then never saw them carry fish on their heads again, according to a 2004 review of nonhuman culture published in the journal Biological Conservation. Recent orca attacks on boats in Europe may be another example of a killer whale fad.

Related: Orcas attack boat with ruthless efficiency, tearing off rudders in just 15 minutes

They engage in "greeting ceremonies"

Killer whales have complicated social rituals and even engage in what researchers call "greeting ceremonies." These interactions are the orca equivalent of a mosh pit, with orcas lining up in two rows and then tumbling together, Smithsonian Magazine reported. During one such event, the greeting coincided with a birth. Three orca pods reunited in the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the boundary between the U.S. and Canada in 2020, and as the orcas whistled and clicked to each other, a pregnant female produced a calf, KUOW, Seattle's National Public Radio news station, reported. The orcas weren't foraging and appeared to be there just to socialize on the day of the birth.

They have distinct dialects

Orcas live in pods based around related mothers and their descendants. Each pod has its own distinctive calls, like different dialects of the same language. The species can learn to mimic new sounds, which may help them form these dialects.

Researchers taught a captive female orca called Wikie to mimic human words like "hello" and "bye-bye," as well as the calls of some other animals. Wikie learned quickly and could reproduce some new sounds on her first attempt.

They employ specialized hunting strategies

Orcas learn highly specialized hunting strategies and pass that knowledge to their offspring. Some killer whales in Argentina beach themselves to snatch seals on the shore, while in Antarctica, other populations create waves to push seals off floating sea ice.

And it's not just seals they learn unique strategies for; killer whales are salmon specialists in parts of the Pacific, beaked whale hunters off Australia and sting-ray snatchers off New Zealand, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List.

Related: 'Chaos of clicks and sounds from below' as 70 orcas kill blue whale

They're picky eaters

Some orca populations seem to have learned that shark livers are particularly rich in nutrients and that it's worth killing sharks and discarding the rest of their carcasses just to get to the nutritious organs. Researchers have documented killer whale populations targeting the livers of a variety of sharks, including attacking great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) off South Africa and tearing open whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) off Mexico.

They appear to have friends

A 2021 study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that orca social bonds are comparable to those seen in primates, including humans. A killer whale interacts more with certain members of its pod, usually those of a similar age and of the same sex.

Michael Weiss, research director of the Center for Whale Research in Washington state, led the study and spoke to Science about two distantly related young males that were always together during the research. "Every time you see a group of whales, those two are right there interacting with each other," Weiss said. "I wouldn't hesitate to use the word friendship here."

They seem to grieve

In 2018, researchers spotted a seemingly grief-stricken female orca pushing her dead newborn calf around. The orca, named Tahlequah, pushed her lifeless calf for at least 17 days, covering 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) of ocean before she eventually let go of it. The Center for Whale Research described it as a "tour of grief."

Wildlife charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation noted on its website that researchers have documented several species of whales and dolphins carrying deceased calves or juveniles, and these "mourning behaviors" are likely common among social, long-lived mammals. Scientists have historically been reluctant to use words like "grief" for fear of projecting human emotions onto animals, BBC Earth previously reported. The motivations behind this behavior still aren't fully understood.

They can be trained

Humans have been training captive orcas for decades. At SeaWorld, for example, killer whales strike poses, splash crowds, wave their pectoral fins and generally flip-flop around on command.

Keeping killer whales in an artificial environment is controversial, with some experts arguing that it causes stress and contributes to disease. SeaWorld announced it was ending its orca captive breeding program in 2016, and the orcas it has now will be the last generation in its care.

They care for one another

Researchers have documented numerous examples of orcas supporting their fellow pod members. For example, orcas have helped injured or deformed family members survive by catching food for them, the Daily Mail previously reported. Killer whale mothers also care for their sons well into adulthood, and orca grandmothers care for their grandchildren after they go through menopause (one of a handful of species to do so).

A 2015 study published in the journal Current Biology found that older females also guide their pod members to food, especially during tough times when food is scarce, suggesting that orcas that no longer reproduce support the survival chances of the pod by imparting wisdom.

Their brains are big

A killer whale's brain can weigh as much as 15 pounds (6.8 kilograms) and is well equipped for analyzing underwater environments, the Orlando Sentinel reported in 2010. One of the species' most impressive intellectual tools involves echolocation. Orcas click to create sound waves and locate prey by detecting when those waves bounce off something. Researchers believe that southern resident killer whales, an orca population that lives off the Pacific Northwest coast, can distinguish chinook salmon from other fish by detecting the size and orientation of salmon swim bladders, which give off unique acoustic signatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

They hunted whales with humans

For around 1,000 years, a population of orcas off the coast of Australia hunted alongside Indigenous people, and later European whalers. They would hit the water to alert humans to the whales' presence and would sometimes tow them to their location using a rope. In exchange, the humans gave the orcas the whales' lips and tongues. The relationship became known as the "Law of the Tongue." It continued until the 1930s, by which time commercial whaling had caused baleen whale stocks to plummet. The orcas left, and this killer whale population is now believed to be dead.