6 ms·

I'm betting some very intelligent animals realized humans are very reluctant to cause them direct harm (read: very illegal to hurt an orca) and have decide to h

I'm betting some very intelligent animals realized humans are very reluctant to cause them direct harm (read: very illegal to hurt an orca) and have decide to have some fun with the humans. Tik Tok for orcas would not be a positive, but I get the feeling they are doing a "look what I did" all the same.

Waterluvian 4y ago
This is probably what you mean, but I imagine it's just a lack of negative evolutionary reinforcement of behaviours cause those behaviours to proliferate. That being said, I'm convinced we continue to deeply underestimate the intelligence and competence of numerous species, even today when we like to talk about how ridiculously smart dolphins and whales and dogs and birds and primates etc... are. I remember thinking, "I will be that dad who does not underestimate my kids capabilities. I won't hold them back." And my 5yo is still absolutely blowing me away with his ability to build complex redstone machines in Minecraft. I think humans are just really good at underestimating competence.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  This is way too fast of a timescale for some selective effect to be the cause.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Yeah that's very true. Perhaps I don't mean "evolution" in a classical sense but rather: animals probe the world, and behaviours that aren't discouraged somehow are more likely to be replicated among the community.
  - mig39 4y ago
    Instead of evolution, some sort of epigenics or something?
    - smolder 4y ago
      How about memetics? I see no reason why memes are only for humans. The orcas must be communicating an idea even if they aren't using words.
  - currency 4y ago
    That's plenty of time for selection pressures to modify a culture. Culture—shared knowledge—is communicated much more quickly than genetic changes.
- stinkytaco 4y ago
  Our very definition of intelligence is part of the issue. There's no question that animals exceed our knowledge in specific domains, a bird who can fly must be vastly more knowledgeable about variable wind conditions than we are. There's a great scene in Lev Grossman's The Magicians where they speak to a talking bear, but all the bear wants to talk about is caves, and area in which his knowledge is so complete that the humans cannot really even talk to him. But our definition of intelligence is narrowed to domains which we live in. That tends to be a wider than most animals, but it's hardly complete.
  - vixen99 4y ago
    As with spiders' k. domains it seems. More limited than I thought. My garden orb weaver found a dried leaf as large as herself in her huge web and proceeded to truss it up as nicely as she could before belatedly realizing that the operation was not going to be to her advantage.
  - celrod 4y ago
    Reminds of the Geifer grizzly. It raided human dwellings for food, signing its death warrant. It wore a radio collar, so it seems like it shouldn't have been a problem to track down. Yet, it evaded hunters for over a year, while still raiding houses for food, without ever being seen. It learned it could cross into Canada for safety when the pressure from the hunters tracking it got to be too much, and then return and invade more houses. Eventually, it was shot and killed by a random hunter in Canada who had no idea who that bear was. The bear didn't know Canadians could also be dangerous, otherwise it probably wouldn't have let anyone see it there either... I think a lot of animals are probably very good at what they've evolved to do. Bears are great at tracking and surviving being tracked (probably more typically by bigger bears); reading about it felt like getting a glimpse into another animal's domain and being totally outmatched.
    - elevaet 4y ago
      Thats a great story!
    - mmsimanga 4y ago
belter 4y ago
So you are saying the Orcas are running their own YouTube channel, and they are doing so humans upload videos, and get the views up? :-)
trhway 4y ago
>I'm betting some very intelligent animals realized humans are very reluctant to cause them direct harm (read: very illegal to hurt an orca) and have decide to have some fun with the humans. didn't work for that walrus Freya. You just need a few not even very bad just not very good humans, especially if they happen to be government bureaucrats. Hope there is more protection for orcas.
- aegis4244 4y ago
  Volgons are the worst.
trasz 4y ago
>are very reluctant to cause them direct harm After we’ve hunted them into endangered status.
ProjectArcturis 4y ago
I think it's the converse: after we've hunted orcas to near extinction, that very intelligent species realized they were no longer the apex predator, and could never win against a land-based species. There are ZERO documented incidents of orcas attacking humans in the water. They've chosen a cultural taboo against hurting humans, in hopes that we would no longer see them as an enemy and stop hunting them. And it worked! Guessing the rudder attacks are either teenage pranks or misunderstanding that boats belong to humans.
- _c3ag 4y ago
  i bet these teenagers attacking boats were hurt by a sail once… or some of them were and taught others (orca attack in Portugal region are not a phenomena exclusively to the article publication year) . orcas have different behavior patterns on different groups roaming the ocean
- unity1001 4y ago
  Cetaceans have been recorded to have been non-aggressive, even helpful towards humans throughout history. That's why we have religious mythologies and regional/national mythologies in which cetaceans are told to save humans or they are treated as deities or spirit figures to appeal to.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    300 years ago, if a fisherman got eaten by an orca, would that have been recorded as "eaten by an orca" or "eaten by a fish/sea monster"? It wasn't until the mid 18th century that cetaceans were asserted to not be fish, it took another century or more for this perspective to permeate popular culture. For instance, in Moby-Dick (1851) Herman Melville dedicates an entire chapter to explaining the taxonomy of cetaceans and says they aren't fish because they breath air, have lungs, have horizontal tails, etc. But then he says whalers scoff at this distinction and consider them fish because they live in the water.
    - unity1001 4y ago

Waterluvian 4y ago

This is probably what you mean, but I imagine it's just a lack of negative evolutionary reinforcement of behaviours cause those behaviours to proliferate. That being said, I'm convinced we continue to deeply underestimate the intelligence and competence of numerous species, even today when we like to talk about how ridiculously smart dolphins and whales and dogs and birds and primates etc... are. I remember thinking, "I will be that dad who does not underestimate my kids capabilities. I won't hold them back." And my 5yo is still absolutely blowing me away with his ability to build complex redstone machines in Minecraft. I think humans are just really good at underestimating competence.

whimsicalism 4y ago
This is way too fast of a timescale for some selective effect to be the cause.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Yeah that's very true. Perhaps I don't mean "evolution" in a classical sense but rather: animals probe the world, and behaviours that aren't discouraged somehow are more likely to be replicated among the community.
- mig39 4y ago
  Instead of evolution, some sort of epigenics or something?
  - smolder 4y ago
    How about memetics? I see no reason why memes are only for humans. The orcas must be communicating an idea even if they aren't using words.
- currency 4y ago
  That's plenty of time for selection pressures to modify a culture. Culture—shared knowledge—is communicated much more quickly than genetic changes.
stinkytaco 4y ago
Our very definition of intelligence is part of the issue. There's no question that animals exceed our knowledge in specific domains, a bird who can fly must be vastly more knowledgeable about variable wind conditions than we are. There's a great scene in Lev Grossman's The Magicians where they speak to a talking bear, but all the bear wants to talk about is caves, and area in which his knowledge is so complete that the humans cannot really even talk to him. But our definition of intelligence is narrowed to domains which we live in. That tends to be a wider than most animals, but it's hardly complete.
- vixen99 4y ago
  As with spiders' k. domains it seems. More limited than I thought. My garden orb weaver found a dried leaf as large as herself in her huge web and proceeded to truss it up as nicely as she could before belatedly realizing that the operation was not going to be to her advantage.
- celrod 4y ago
  Reminds of the Geifer grizzly. It raided human dwellings for food, signing its death warrant. It wore a radio collar, so it seems like it shouldn't have been a problem to track down. Yet, it evaded hunters for over a year, while still raiding houses for food, without ever being seen. It learned it could cross into Canada for safety when the pressure from the hunters tracking it got to be too much, and then return and invade more houses. Eventually, it was shot and killed by a random hunter in Canada who had no idea who that bear was. The bear didn't know Canadians could also be dangerous, otherwise it probably wouldn't have let anyone see it there either... I think a lot of animals are probably very good at what they've evolved to do. Bears are great at tracking and surviving being tracked (probably more typically by bigger bears); reading about it felt like getting a glimpse into another animal's domain and being totally outmatched.
  - elevaet 4y ago
    Thats a great story!
  - mmsimanga 4y ago

belter 4y ago

So you are saying the Orcas are running their own YouTube channel, and they are doing so humans upload videos, and get the views up? :-)

trhway 4y ago

>I'm betting some very intelligent animals realized humans are very reluctant to cause them direct harm (read: very illegal to hurt an orca) and have decide to have some fun with the humans. didn't work for that walrus Freya. You just need a few not even very bad just not very good humans, especially if they happen to be government bureaucrats. Hope there is more protection for orcas.

aegis4244 4y ago
Volgons are the worst.

trasz 4y ago

>are very reluctant to cause them direct harm After we’ve hunted them into endangered status.

ProjectArcturis 4y ago

I think it's the converse: after we've hunted orcas to near extinction, that very intelligent species realized they were no longer the apex predator, and could never win against a land-based species. There are ZERO documented incidents of orcas attacking humans in the water. They've chosen a cultural taboo against hurting humans, in hopes that we would no longer see them as an enemy and stop hunting them. And it worked! Guessing the rudder attacks are either teenage pranks or misunderstanding that boats belong to humans.

_c3ag 4y ago
i bet these teenagers attacking boats were hurt by a sail once… or some of them were and taught others (orca attack in Portugal region are not a phenomena exclusively to the article publication year) . orcas have different behavior patterns on different groups roaming the ocean
unity1001 4y ago
Cetaceans have been recorded to have been non-aggressive, even helpful towards humans throughout history. That's why we have religious mythologies and regional/national mythologies in which cetaceans are told to save humans or they are treated as deities or spirit figures to appeal to.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  300 years ago, if a fisherman got eaten by an orca, would that have been recorded as "eaten by an orca" or "eaten by a fish/sea monster"? It wasn't until the mid 18th century that cetaceans were asserted to not be fish, it took another century or more for this perspective to permeate popular culture. For instance, in Moby-Dick (1851) Herman Melville dedicates an entire chapter to explaining the taxonomy of cetaceans and says they aren't fish because they breath air, have lungs, have horizontal tails, etc. But then he says whalers scoff at this distinction and consider them fish because they live in the water.
  - unity1001 4y ago