Who says Orcas are smart!

[stoneaxe]

This ones trying to talk to an outboard....

Kind of sad actually but amazing as well.

[Kaihoe]

Hes doing a better job trying to communicate than we would

[Bean]

If I had to guess, he's saying, "this is what your shitty Evinrude sounds like".

[PonoBill]

Sadder than you know, that's Luna, a young Orca that got separated from it's pod very young and bonded to humans. It was constantly getting too close to boats. Finally was killed by a tugboat prop. Remarkable animal. Constantly made attempts to communicate with people. If we were smarter we would have talked back.

[eastbound]

ouch--very sad--we humans suck

[Bean]

That is an unbelievably sad outcome...

[Chilly]

I have a feeling he had a brain disorder and was probably rejected by his pod. It just doesn’t seem like normal behavior. 

[PonoBill]

Nope, he was normal in every respect except he bonded to people. Wouldn't happen to animals of lesser intelligence--Orcas are strongly social. Luna was probably the only Orca that ever actually belonged in Sea world. Various groups tried to get a permit to move him to captivity, but the process moved too slow. Sad that laws intended to protect him and good intentions got him killed. Everyone knew it was going to happen, There were many close calls. If you see a video of a young Orca surfing in a boat wake it's probably Luna.

[SuppaTime]

These threads with a shitty ending need a skull and crossbones warning. Ruined my day.

[PonoBill]

Don't google "the lonliest whale" then.  And don't read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(killer_whale)

For some reason that link doesn't work directly, try this one:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_(killer_whale)#Early_life

People tried to rescue Luna. It's not a terribly sad story, no one did anything "wrong" or nasty, just conflicting beliefs and ideas about what was best. People cared. The US government made extraordinary efforts even though Luna was in Canadian waters. The people in Nootka sound did everything they could. Some things are hard to fix. The story of Springer is a better one, very similar, better outcome. Orphaned orcas are fortunately rare. Being on the very top of the food chain helps a lot.

I think if you wanted to chase Great Whites out of an area that some Orca hunting chatter would work. Nothing seems to bother the Great Whites in the Farallons  except a pod of Orcas--then they vanish and don't come back for quite a while.

[SuppaTime]

Our dog suddenly died a few days ago so my appetite for sad animal stories is not too great at the moment. Animals in the wild have pretty brutal endings. We live sanitized lives, our pets included. We forget how cruel nature really is.

I was watching a local mud wasp subdue a cane spider that was 5x bigger than the wasp. It stunned the spider and dragged it across our driveway to suck its juices out. I would not want to be that cane spider.

[PonoBill]

Worse than you think. that wasp probably had an orange or red tail and black body. Called a "cow killer" and other names. Very aggressive and the sting is nasty. It's an invasive species, joining a zillion others in Hawaii that find handy niches. It zapped the cane spider with a paralytic toxin that leaves it alive. Then it drags it to a hiding place and lays eggs inside the body. When the wasp grubs hatch, they eat the living spider from the inside out.

So no, you don't want to be that cane spider.

Nature isn't cruel, it's nature. Each of us are the current end result of trillions of trillions of bloody battles to the death, from single cell on up the evolutionary ladder. The number of things that lost the battle and died to put you here--and every other thing that lives today--is a theoretically calculable number, but probably hard to even comprehend.

I hunt down and kill every cow killer I see. They're fortunately not social, so killing them reduces the number available to lay eggs.

[OUTSIDEWAVE]

perhaps the orca is making fun of the  guys on the boat?

[NoSaltSuper]

"
I think if you wanted to chase Great Whites out of an area that some Orca hunting chatter would work. Nothing seems to bother the Great Whites in the Farallons  except a pod of Orcas--then they vanish and don't come back for quite a while.

Has this ever been tried at sharky beaches?
 Underwater speakers or similar?

Watched a program the other day of an Orca immobilizing a GW, then eating it's liver once the shark died. Was at the Farallons.
Orcas arrived, GWs vanished.

Kinda nice to know that GWs are afraid of an animal that doesn't harm humans!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[PonoBill]

I think Orcas kill a lot more great whites than we know about, and I think they go after the big ones. No scientific reason to think that, but the few examples of Orcas killing great whites that have been filmed have been of sharks in the 15' plus range, and had the appearance of teaching sessions in that young orcas were included in the hunt, and it took place over long periods of time. Orcas teach their young how to hunt specific animals, and the lessons take time, so they are more likely to be observed. I can imagine that it sucks to be the object of an Orca hunting lesson. Orcas have a variety of ways to kill sharks, and they all seem to be highly effective. the sharks have no defense against the attack that rolls them on their backs.

The other reason I think that is how quickly the great whites leave an area when Orcas show up, and how long it takes them to come back.

I doubt anyone has tried Orca chatter to drive sharks away, this is relatively new information, though it's been anecdotally known for a century that there never sharks present where there are Orcas.