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From the article: > "I’ve seen them look at boats hauling fish. I think they know that humans are somehow related to the scarcity of food" If they are really
by dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
From the article:
> "I’ve seen them look at boats hauling fish. I think they know that humans are somehow related to the scarcity of food"
If they are really that smart, they would be smart enough to figure out humans are made of food too, right? Some orca at some point in time would've realized it and eaten a human, yet that hasn't happened.
Hear me out: what if they don't kill us out of self preservation? They see the fishing boats, the harpoons. They even see the gigantic war ships, and are probably smart enough to realize that those are linked. Would we attract the ire of a species that is much more advanced than ours if it was just harvesting resources? Not until we're almost dead from starvation.
- luckylion 6y ago> Some orca at some point in time would've realized it and eaten a human, yet that hasn't happened. There are no known attacks on humans, that doesn't mean that is hasn't happened. Orcas are generally not hunting where humans swim, and they aren't going to capsize a freighter. Plus there's better food in the water, and it's more frequent. An orca, or a family of orcas that would specialize on hunting humans would starve. We don't swim in the open sea a lot, they don't walk through towns a lot. I believe you're over-estimating their intelligence.
- dj_mc_merlin 6y agoFair point about the no known attacks. There's stories about orcas killing humans in many cultures that historically interacted with killers whales. > I believe you're over-estimating their intelligence. One of my favourite orca stories is the killers of Eden[0]. The wiki page is short and worth a read, but to summarize: a pod of whales learns to herd whales into a bay and alert humans to them. Humans harpoon them and the pod helps drag them back by pulling on the ropes. The carcass is left overnight for the pod, that eats its lips and tongue. Afterwards, the humans haul it back. Why would the orcas alert the humans unless they realized that the humans were responsible for the harpooning? Furthermore, just the act of slapping the river with water to attract attention is already quite advanced. And why did they only eat part of the whale (and always the same part)? Why did they never eat the humans? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_South_Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou...
- luckylion 6y agoI'm not trying to say that orcas aren't intelligent, they certainly are. We can cooperate with them, and they understand things, much like other dolphins do. If they weren't, you couldn't train them. I don't believe they're "if you eat that guy over there, the navy will come and hunt us down" smart though.
- andrewflnr 6y agoThey don't need to have such a clear idea of the consequences to realize it's a bad idea. Not antagonizing entities stronger than you are is a pretty basic instinct.
- formerly_proven 6y ago> Not antagonizing entities stronger than you are is a pretty basic instinct. See, something insects don't get.
- thwarted 6y agoInsects are stronger in number. That you kill one that is biting you or buzzing around your head doesn't matter.
- formerly_proven 6y agoStealing food from humans and annoying them is a very easy way to get food for wasps. But if they do it for long enough, the humans might decide to find their nest and eradicate the entire colony. The suggestion in this thread is that orcas are intelligent enough to realize (on any level of consciousness) this being a possibility for them if they start to harm (or even just annoy) humans.
- luckylion 6y agoThey'd need a pretty abstract idea of strength though. The individual human isn't stronger than them at all, so they'd need to deduct that the fact that humans are using tools probably means they can also build weapons etc. Since manual whaling hasn't happened for quite a while, they'd need to communicate abstract concepts to their offspring to keep the memory alive. It's one thing to demonstrate to them how to synchronize dives to create a wave and flush a seal off of an ice sheet, it's quite another to explain the process of humans hunting them with ships and harpoons and indicating that humanity's technology has progressed.
- liability 6y agoI agree. Orcas are known to have multi-generational culture to at least a limited extent; perhaps orcas remember commercial whaling and know humans are skilled at killing whales when we choose to. Or maybe they could work that out just by observing what we can do today. I doubt attacking humans would be good for orcas in the long run, and perhaps their intellect allows them to generally understand this while sharks don't. (Orcas don't even nibble on humans out of curiosity, so how would they know we don't taste delicious? In this regard sharks seem more curious than orcas, which is seems strange since they're otherwise very curious animals.)
- stupendousyappi 6y agoThey don't attack us because it would waste calories and risk injury in exchange for nothing.
- rv-de 6y agoThey specifically remove the liver of sharks and ignore the rest ... they could do that with humans, too.
- cgriswald 6y agoA great white shark's liver is huge, heavy, and oily. I'm not sure an orca could physically even accomplish the task of separating out a human liver and if it did, it sure wouldn't be satisfying.
- liability 6y agoThere are plenty of videos of Orcas and other dolphins playing in the wild. I don't think they're generally on a super tight caloric budget.
- Waterfall 6y agoWhat if they don't like the taste of apes? What sort of mammals do they like?