[HN Gopher] Unique killer whale pod may have acquired special sk...
___________________________________________________________________
Unique killer whale pod may have acquired special skills to hunt
whale sharks
Author : pseudolus
Score : 53 points
Date : 2024-11-29 11:49 UTC (9 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Are there any definitive reasons as to why killer whales haven't
| targeted humans?
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I don't know. They also haven't targeted chimpanzees or
| gorillas. I feel there could be a deeper reason we're
| missing!
| kijin wrote:
| Do chimps and gorillas regularly swim in seas populated by
| killer whales?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| 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.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They will kill as play, so I dont think that is it. It could
| be that we both tase bad and are uninteresting.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| To be fair, we only know there are no reported orca attacks.
| For a report to be filed they'd have to leave witnesses ;).
| awinter-py wrote:
| uh they one thousand percent have
|
| did a killer whale write this
| kleton wrote:
| They probably have ancient oral history that that's a bad idea.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| 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.
| krisoft wrote:
| > 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.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| Consider whaling, by killer apes.
| moffkalast wrote:
| 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?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| gus_massa wrote:
| 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.
| kijin wrote:
| 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.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| 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...
| timschmidt wrote:
| 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.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > 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).
| hackeraccount wrote:
| 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.
| threeseed wrote:
| 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.
| dotancohen wrote:
| 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).
| alas44 wrote:
| Je me suis senti vise
| dotancohen wrote:
| J'ai essaye d'etre discrete.
| HKH2 wrote:
| *palate
| dotancohen wrote:
| Thank you. It's too late to edit, but I've learned.
| doitLP wrote:
| Are seals seafood?
| meroes wrote:
| Saltwater crocs bridge the gap! (idk only eaten alligator
| but it was surprisingly "terrestrial")
| dotancohen wrote:
| Tasted like chicken?
| reliablereason wrote:
| 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)
| Hilift wrote:
| Some people just smell bad and taste bad.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| They have stories about what almost happened to the wales.
| setopt wrote:
| 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
| gcanyon wrote:
| 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.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| 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
| gcanyon wrote:
| 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.
| alexwasserman wrote:
| 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.
| echelon wrote:
| 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.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-08 23:01 UTC)