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Orcas working in teams to knock seals off an iceberg with waves: https://youtu.be/g1VEwsI4SlY https://youtu.be/g1VEwsI4SlY So what can we conclude? Super smar

• huffmsa 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure there isn't a single case of a wild orca going after a human without provocation. There are lots of recorded cases of them helping humans though https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_S...
  • Tistel 7y ago
    i waste too much time on YouTube. But there is another video of a snorkel diver lady who swears a whale (forget which species) protected her from a shark. It would be nice to think there is some mammal bro behaviour (flipper <-> Hand fist bump!) but evolution has altered our morphology so much I doubt they see us as distant relatives. It took humans ages to see the evolutionary connection from us to everything else. I know a lot of animal hunt mainly on smell. Maybe we smell related. Or taste bad. Or maybe they just find us sufficiently amusing not to merc us.
    • 52-6F-62 7y ago
      I haven’t been lucky enough to encounter them but there are entire bays in Hawaii where only whale sharks will regularly go. Tiger and bull sharks will stay well away most of the time because of the dolphins and dolphins love people. I like to think that they think we’re all just loveable fools à la Douglas Adams.
    • tekkk 7y ago
      Aren't seals mammals? And in captivity, killer whales have a killed a few humans, dunno the total count. So I guess they just don't find humans that appetizing in the wild, or just haven't had the chance to try them out. I'm not sure how common it's for humans to swim in the same waters as killer whales. And isn't it quite rare for sharks to attack humans too?
      • Semiapies 7y ago
        I wonder if it's a matter of looking at humans and going, "Wow, that weird little critter has such a hard time moving around." and some protective instinct for injured or sick pod members kicking in. Or maybe we're just ugly-cute to them.
        • kevingadd 7y ago
          I would assume it overlaps with whatever instinct or learned behavior inspires them to kill sharks - if you're not going to kill a shark directly, why not deprive it of a meal?
      • puranjay 7y ago
        The captivity killings can be explained by the psychosis brought about by keeping an intelligent, social animal in isolation inside a pool
        • ceejayoz 7y ago
          And revenge for mistreatment, potentially.
    • bcrosby95 7y ago
      All sorts of dangerous-to-humans animals are mammals too. I think you're seeing a connection where there isn't one.
      • nkrisc 7y ago
        In fact many of the animals that could or have actively preyed on humans are mammals: large felines, and to a lesser extent, canines. Reptiles probably take second place though thanks to crocs.
    • koonsolo 7y ago
      > mammal bro behaviour You might be onto something here. Dolphins look cute, and orca's don't look like the killers they really are. Sharks on the other hand look scary. So it works the other way around. But they do eat seals, which are probably closer related to them than us?
    • mixmastamyk 7y ago
      From the article it appears orcas are aggressive towards sharks in the area since they are competitors. Likely more territorial than “let me protect this weird water monkey.”
    • stjohnswarts 7y ago
      Humans really tend to anthropomorphize animals but it's about 99% more likely that the orca didn't want the great white in its hunting grounds or near its pod's younglings.
  • montjoy 7y ago
    There have been a couple of reported attacks by early Antarctic explorers. It’s not clear if the orcas were provoked/mistook the men and dogs for their usual prey. https://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/2011/2011Pitman4.pdf https://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/2011/2011Pitman4.pdf
  • ErikCorry 7y ago
    If you lived on a planet where there were lots of dumb animals you could eat, and also one not-very-meaty alien species that was 10x more intelligent than you and had machines and weapons, would you try to eat the superintelligent ones? I think they are just too smart to eat humans.
    • puranjay 7y ago
      We can't taste pretty good either. We're all muscle and bones. Not enough fat, especially on the kind of people who might be in their feeding zones (say, surfers).
  • bitwize 7y ago
    They might think we're cute. We could be like kittens to them or something.
    • krapp 7y ago
      I'm sure they'd eat kittens like popcorn if they could.
      • bitwize 7y ago
        "I think I'll call them Popplers."
• DailyHN 7y ago
  > I don’t know of any attacks on surfers. Which seems odd. That could be because surfers tend to be in much shallower water.
  • gerbilly 7y ago
    Waves break in water depths approximately 1.3 times their height. So if most surfers surf in waves up to about 6ft, the water depth below a surfer is only about 8 feet. If the waves get bigger than that, it quickly thins out the crowds. On ten foot days, typically only a few people will be out. See: https://magicseaweed.com/help/near-shore-effects/breaking-waves https://magicseaweed.com/help/near-shore-effects/breaking-wa...
    • shhshahassa 7y ago
      That's not true. Look at mavericks or pipeline the crowds are insane.
  • Shalle135 7y ago
    orcas sometime hunt animals that are on the beach. Orcas don’t see humans as prey. In Norway you can dive with wild once in the fjords and there are no recorded attacks in the last 200 years. https://youtu.be/DWsN63PRCW8 https://youtu.be/DWsN63PRCW8
• abrowne 7y ago
  Livers too small to be worth it?
• ivanhoe 7y ago
  Most of shark attacks on surfers are mistakes, so perhaps orcas are just smarter and see better, and can make a distinction between seals and humans on boards? But then again I've heard about orcas sinking sailing boats and trying to attack polar explorers by breaking the ice below them, so it's not like they're completely uninterested in attacking humans. It probably depends how much contact with humans they have. Being predators, it's only logical that they will eat anything they can catch when the hunger strikes...
• krsdcbl 7y ago
  Love is human concept, for all we know
  • tim333 7y ago
    Many species seem to love their offspring. It seems unlikely to be human only.
    • stjohnswarts 7y ago
      I agree. Animals may or may not have our emotional depth but it seems very illogical to assume they don't have emotions like love, especially animals similar to us like other mammals. They clearly have evolutionary value for providing social structure and nurturing virtually helpless babies and toddlers. Many will risk their lives without hesitation against ridiculous odds to save other pack members.
• dylan604 7y ago
  > Orcas working in teams to knock seals off an iceberg with waves: https://youtu.be/g1VEwsI4SlY https://youtu.be/g1VEwsI4SlY At the end of that clip, she gets so excited about seeing something that "no one had seen before", yet at the beginning, she talks about them hoping to see this because of reports of it happening. Huh? Contradict yourself much? I hate these overly dramatic reality type documentaries. Otherwise, some great footage, and could have been so much better without the overly produced interview.
  • heavenlyblue 7y ago
    I can imagine it’s pretty much the same reason people tend to hate Greenpeace, which is sad.
  • mixmastamyk 7y ago
    A report of it is different than a 4k high-fps recording of it.
    • dylan604 7y ago
      To make the report, someone had to have seen it.
      • mixmastamyk 7y ago
        Pedantic readings are not very interesting. "No one" can also mean "not a significant amount of people." Recording and distributing it is the antidote.
  • nkrisc 7y ago
    I don't think it had ever been filmed so clearly before, if it all. Besides, I wouldn't waste your time nitpicking what someone blurts out in a moment of excitement.
• idoubtit 7y ago
  Meta: I can't bear watching this video, I find it infuriating. It's a mix of many shots, with no temporal continuity. I don't think there is a continuous shot of more than 3 seconds. The music is annoying (wouldn't natural noise be much more impressive) and over the top. The attack scene is not even clear because of all this. And most of the time is spent watching someone boasting that her "scientific" film is marvelous. I don't have TV at home, and I rarely watch youtube and modern videos, so I suppose I'm just not used to way TV is nowadays. Even the BBC. I hope it doesn't help inducing ADHD.
  • chongli 7y ago
    I don't think there is a continuous shot of more than 3 seconds Stay away from modern Hollywood movies! This sort of frenetic cutting is endemic these days. I miss Stanley Kubrick!
    • joejerryronnie 7y ago
      Just watch the opening scene of The Graduate to balance out the frenetic cuts.
  • dylan604 7y ago
    That's the trend of these type of shows. While these types of shows can/could be considered educational content, they try to over dramatize them to make them "entertaining". They try to build up some drama/tension even if it is obviously forced. Then intercut with the limited video footage you have even reusing the same footage. There's a fine line to keep educational content from boring your viewers to tears and making it feel like sitting in a secondary school class, but the producers have not gotten it right yet.
  • 14 7y ago
    I have to completely agree. Horrible video. I found a much better one that is very neat to watch the orcas do a coordinated attack. Check this one out: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AwbNRNCxhFg https://youtube.com/watch?v=AwbNRNCxhFg
• maxerickson 7y ago
  It seems likely enough that they have something like stories about us.
• kendallpark 7y ago
  > no love for other mammals Orcas are certainly the bullies of the ocean, but they seem to exhibit complex behavior when it comes to their relationship with other mammals. For example, after capturing, "playing" with, and eating baby seals, an orca carries one seal back to shore and sets it free. It's odd behavior. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWsN63PRCW8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWsN63PRCW8 There are also cases of orcas saving humans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZkkHesyjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZkkHesyjg > In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, orcas near Eden, Australia, would drive humpback whales into an area known as Twofold Bay in exchange for their favorite pieces of meat—the tongue and the lips. This working relationship where the killer whales worked as whale killers for more than a hundred years was referred to by local fishermen as “the law of the tongue.” https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/killer-whale-avoids-eating-people-helped-19th-century-whalers-became-public-enemy-number-one/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/killer-whale-avoids-eat...
  • empath75 7y ago
    > It's odd behavior. There’s no point in letting a potential future meal drown if you’re not hungry at the moment.
    • me_me_me 7y ago
      What is odd is that they don't attack humans. Never in wild, only in captivity (not surprising though give amount abuse they get in captivity).
  • seppin 7y ago
    "Bullying" is a simple phenomenon explained by physical size and capacity in relation to everyone else. If you have the size, you bully. Very few exceptions.
    • kendallpark 7y ago
      Pretty much all aquatic species larger than the orca are relatively peaceful and do not harass other species (eg, baleen whales, sperm whales, whale sharks, basking sharks). It's not merely a size thing. Orcas, in fact, tend to harass these larger species. Humpback whales will even go so far as to protect other mammals from orcas. > For six and a half hours, the humpbacks slashed at the killer whales with their flippers and tails. And despite thick swarms of krill spotted nearby—a favorite food for humpbacks—the giants did not abandon their vigil. > It’s not clear why the humpbacks would risk injury and waste so much energy protecting an entirely different species. What is clear is that this was not an isolated incident. In the last 62 years, there have been 115 interactions recorded between humpback whales and killer whales, according to a study published in July in the journal Marine Mammal Science. "Why Humpback Whales Protect Other Animals From Killer Whales" https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/08/humpback-whales-save-animals-killer-whales-explained/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/08/humpback-wha... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mms.12343?campaign=wolearlyview https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mms.12343?c...
• phreenet 7y ago
  Very scary indeed. https://youtu.be/y8iipFTBanc https://youtu.be/y8iipFTBanc
• teunispeters 7y ago
  Entirely informal, but I went through reports of 100 years of killer whale/human interactions in the news in British Columbia/Canada (home of 3 different varieties of killer whales) - and there's three cases of humans attacked, and all cases were provoked.
  • bitexploder 7y ago
    It’s possible they recognize that (a) we are small and not worth the trouble and (b) they recognize other higher brain mammal life. But they hunt dolphins so.... Maybe it’s just that we don’t live in their environment.
• daveFNbuck 7y ago
  > I don’t know of any attacks on surfers. Which seems odd. It's not just humans that they don't attack. Orcas have cultural food preferences and tend to hunt only the prey that they grew up eating.
• chubot 7y ago
  Wow interesting. There seems to be more and more evidence that orcas, dolphins, and octopuses are very intelligent. I wonder if one of them would achieve human-like intelligence if they evolved for a billion more years. I would bet on it. And then they would probably multiply without control, and kill off all their competitors. On land, humans have done that. Although elephants are very intelligent, we're the smarter than them and outnumber them and all other animals by a large margin. We live on nearly every part of the earth. It would be interesting/weird if the sea filled up with one large, intelligent animal that lived everywhere.
  • darkerside 7y ago
    Without fire, it's hard to imagine the virtuous cycle getting kick-started in the same way
    • chubot 7y ago
      Fire is important but, borrowing from Jared Diamond, I think agriculture/domestication is the defining technology that enables population density and growth. A steady food supply enables density, which leads to exchange of and competition in ideas. e.g. compare a city with 100,000 citizens vs. a hunter-gatherer society. Fire is related to agriculture but maybe not essential. It could be some other kind of chemical reaction that occurs outside the body. It's hard to imagine how descendants of orcas could create agriculture in the ocean, but not impossible. I mean humans have domesticated fish, shrimp, mollusks, etc. for farming. And probably some marine plants. It does seem like shallow water is probably the best bet, but maybe that's my lack of imagination.
      • darkerside 7y ago
        I agree agriculture is possible in some form. That's why I think the real blocker is combustion. Is there any other kind of chemical reaction that can generate energy that can be harnessed and that works underwater?
  • miles 7y ago
    > Although elephants are very intelligent, we're the smarter than them and outnumber them and all other animals by a large margin. We are out-numbered by many orders of magnitude by a number of different animals: Which life form dominates Earth? http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150211-whats-the-most-dominant-life-form http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150211-whats-the-most-domin... This strange, glowing fish is more abundant than rats, chickens, and humans combined https://www.businessinsider.com/bristlemouth-fish-is-the-most-abundant-vertebrate-on-earth-2015-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/bristlemouth-fish-is-the-mos... Along With Humans, Who Else Is In The 7 Billion Club? https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/03/141946751/along-with-humans-who-else-is-in-the-7-billion-club https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/03/141946751...
• golover721 7y ago
  It’s a myth that they never attack humans in the wild. As with most shark attacks it seems to be a case of mistaken identity. Since orcas are significantly more intelligent though they usually retreat before any real harm is done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale_attack
  • sethammons 7y ago
    > In the wild, there have been no fatal attacks on humans and only one reported bite I don't think the one reported bite counts as an attack.
    • golover721 7y ago
      An attack doesn’t mean death or severe injury. There have been plenty of attacks but they pretty much all have resulted in no injuries.
• cygx 7y ago
  Super smart, organized and no love for other mammals. Depends on the population: The 'resident' (in contrast to 'transient') orcas in the Pacific Northwest do not eat mammals, even though it would be to their benefit as salmon is getting sparse...
• Tiktaalik 7y ago
  The Blue Planet making of video showed that the Orcas filmed trying to knock the seals off the ice flow seemingly attempted the same "trick" on the humans on the small boat filming them. While it is remarkable that we don't seem to have evidence of orcas attacking humans, this making of video seemed to suggest to me that they were at least thinking about it.
  • sandworm101 7y ago
    No evidence of wild orca attacking humans. There are plenty of examples in captivity. But if something the size of a large white, or any orca, wants to actually eat you, there wont be much of a body left to find. You could be swimming in a group and just vanish. I would not get too comfortable around anything with teeth that size.