13 ms·
Killer whales wreck boat in latest attack off Spain
- fileeditview 3y agoThe Swarm
- mmwelt 3y agoIn case anyone's wondering, this is a TV series: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0808491 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0808491
- throwbadubadu 3y agoActually a book: https://www.amazon.de/Swarm-Novel-Deep-Frank-Sch%C3%A4tzing/dp/0340920750/ https://www.amazon.de/Swarm-Novel-Deep-Frank-Sch%C3%A4tzing/...
- throwbadubadu 3y agoHmm, so many similar interpretations, and I wonder why does nobody mention that this is exactly the plot start of that book, and then I find this one downvoted? Funny:) Or what am I missing?
- _Microft 3y agoThey are referring to this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(Sch%C3%A4tzing_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(Sch%C3%A4tzing_nove...
- newqer 3y agoAll fun and games until a 4000Kg Orca is joining the game.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoIf they weren't 4 tonne sea-dwelling highly social apex predators which terrify sharks they'd probably make quite good pets.
- belter 3y agoMany past threads but these two seem the ones with most comments "Orcas are breaking rudders off boats in Europe" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32593799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32593799 "Orcas have learned how to drown great white sharks" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15723393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15723393
- speed_spread 3y agoReminds me of this Onion classic: "Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumb" - https://www.theonion.com/dolphins-evolve-opposable-thumbs-1819565718 https://www.theonion.com/dolphins-evolve-opposable-thumbs-18...
- pkphilip 3y agoReminds me of the Slashdot meme before the term meme even came into existence - Sharks with lasers!
- scrame 3y ago"meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins in the 70s and sharks with lasers is a mid-90s joke from austin powers.
- june_twenty 3y ago'internet memes' as we know them today were not around in the 80s or 90s
- sokoloff 3y agoDancing baby and "All your base are belong to us" are definitely from the 90s.
- Sharlin 3y agoIt's very appropriate that the concept of "meme" itself is an example of memetic drift.
- chrisco255 3y agoWe had memes in the 90s. But you had to use Photoshop like a grownup not some cheap meme generator site. It only cost $1200 for a license, and most of us were broke kids (not actual grownups) so you had to join a WAREZ chat room on AOL and beg for a crack, then you'd spend a week downloading it on your 28k modem. Then you'd skillfully construct a meme from scratch based on some images you collected off personal home pages on Geocities because Google image search didn't even exist back then.
- m463 3y agoBefore that you had to create a chain letter, with a strongly worded section to forward the letter to 10 friends, and detailing the penalties for breaking the chain.
- ChatGTP 3y agoIs there any chance Orcas might become self-aware and begin to interrupt shipping and eventually take over? Edit: It was a silly joke...I was being ironic. I believe garden worms are self-ware.
- chasd00 3y agoIf they interfere with commerce they’ll be killed.
- ben_w 3y agoYou say that, but all they need is to wear a messy blonde wig and the British will ask one to be Prime Minister, no matter how much they interfere with trade. And it would almost certainly still be more popular than any of the human attempts.
- rvense 3y agoThere is absolutely no question that they are already self-aware.
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoWhat's alarming is that younger orcas are learning how to do it: > Two days earlier, a pod of six orcas assailed another sailboat navigating the strait. Greg Blackburn, who was aboard the vessel, looked on as a mother orca appeared to teach her calf how to charge into the rudder. "It was definitely some form of education, teaching going on," https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-boats-in-europe-and-appear-to-be-teaching-others-to-do-the-same-but-why https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-... > Experts suspect that a female orca they call White Gladis suffered a "critical moment of agony" — a collision with a boat or entrapment during illegal fishing — that flipped a behavioral switch. "That traumatized orca is the one that started this behavior of physical contact with the boat,"
- paradoxyl 3y agoAlarming? There's 7,000,000,000 humans and only 50,000 orcas left. Who's in the wrong here?
- potatototoo99 3y agoThe orcas. Humans are the apex predator, the orcas better clean their act before we lose our patience.
- slily 3y agoWhat's with the anti-human attitude? Sounds like a lot of the commenters here would rather kill 1000 humans (but of course not you or your family or your friends, maybe just some Spanish fishermen?) than the same number of orcas.
- markhahn 3y agoyou've got it backwards: Earth is not a zero-sum game. "we'd be better off with fewer than 8G people" is not advocating murder, either.
- notmypenguin 3y agoWhat’s with the human centric attitude? Do we own this planet or are we one mammal species on it currently driving the other species towards mass extinction?
- manojlds 3y agoGood for them, I guess?
- piatra 3y agoHow long until it’s open season on hunting them.
- areoform 3y ago> How long until it’s open season on hunting them. In 2011, the subgroup had 39 members. Yes, let's go hunt a sentient, intelligent species trying to protect themselves and their young to extinction; forever losing their intelligence and culture. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27770983/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27770983/
- tgv 3y ago[flagged]
- multiplegeorges 3y ago> Literally nothing of value will be lost. Shockingly small-minded thing to say.
- tgv 3y agoI knew people were going to react like that, but tell me: what value is there in the primitive, inscrutable culture of a tiny group? That kind of thing gets lost all the time. Every time a school class graduates, their tiny culture dissolves. I'll repeat that I'm against hunting them, but that's because they are sentient and intelligent.
- omniglottal 3y agoPrecisely the same rationale can be applied to you. When you figure out why your inscrutable culture has any perceptible value, apply that reasoning outside your intentionally-narrowed values system. Recognize that the culture has not truly dissolved - it's merely your recognition thereof which has. What value is there in the advanced, inscrutable culture of a large group?
- AntiRemote 3y ago[flagged]
- areoform 3y agoOrcas are genuinely amazing creatures. We have observed evidence for culture within them, and witnessed them engage in social learning behavior identical to humans. So much so that it's important to consider their culture when we consider conservation w.r.t. orcas, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320704001338?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063... One of my favorite examples is that, in the 1980s, an orca started wearing a dead salmon on her nose. Others soon followed. They copied the pioneer until everyone was doing it. They then subsequently got bored, abandoned the trend & forgot about it. Alder or A99 rediscovered the trend in 2019 and it became cool to balance salmon on your nose again, https://www.instagram.com/p/CZkhP0fvhXn/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CZkhP0fvhXn/ In this case, it's very likely that someone hurt one of them and they're now trying to make the world safer for themselves. They've figured out a way to deal with the entity they see as a threat and they've spread that knowledge. It's all very human. I suspect that it might actually be possible to try diplomacy in this case. I may be wrong, but I suspect that they could be reasoned with. This moment in time could lead to a breakthrough in inter-species communication.
- ben_w 3y agoI love ideas like that, but I'd expect us to learn North Sentinelese from passive remote drone observations before we can manage a different species.
- blinding-streak 3y agoDisagree. Animal training and behavior is a vast field of research humans have studied for hundreds of years. We're not starting from scratch. And we already interact with orcas constantly, based on these reports. It would be straightforward to experiment. Interacting in any way with the North Sentinel folks is forbidden.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 3y agoI mean, apart from a few kidnapped ones in the 1800's, few Sentinelese have ever interacted with the rest of us. Human-Orca contact, on the other hand, is relatively common.
- boffinAudio 3y agoI'm really curious about what techniques can be used to fight back against these attacks, preferably non-lethal .. has anyone tried blasting them with sound, or maybe some other technique to get them to back off? I mean, what about feeding them a few snacks - can they be bought off? Seems to me a daring sailor might ought to find the answers to these questions ..
- L_226 3y ago> has anyone tried blasting them with sound Everything in the ocean is getting blasted by our human sound. Shipping, sonar, drilling - none of this ever stops and I would not be surprised if the Orcas have had enough.
- peterjancelis 3y agoThe official recommendations to sailors is: Shut off the engine, take down the sails, make no sound, wait. What sailors will admit they do but not tell anyone: Dump a bit of diesel or petrol in the water around the boat to scare away the orcas. There are also some new gadgets available to make high pitched sounds that humans can't hear but scare away orcas (and dolphins, unfortunately) but no idea if they work well.
- londons_explore 3y ago> What sailors will admit they do but not tell anyone: Dump a bit of diesel or petrol in the water around the boat to scare away the orcas Pumping bilge water into the sea makes them go away real quick. It's obviously illegal, but frequently done.
- AHOHA 3y agoWhat if.. that’s the reason why they are attacking?
- LgWoodenBadger 3y agoWell whatever you do, don't try snacks with dolphins. The federal penalties in the US are severe.
- blinding-streak 3y agohttps://archive.ph/nn90e https://archive.ph/nn90e
- hidden80 3y agoWhat's communication like between orcas and dolphins, and even... whales? Could this behavior be learned by, say, blue whales?
- Dobbs 3y agoOrcas are dolphins. Do you mean bottle nose dolphins?
- hidden80 3y agoI think so. You just reminded me that orcas are dolphins, but I'm more curious about the potentially devastating effect of a blue whale exhibiting this sort of "aggression".
- z3phyr 3y agoBlue whales are usually loners and thus not capable of planning and inflicting damage like a pack of sea wolves. Blue whales are usually also very calm and do not have teeth (They can still be aggressive in defending themselves or their calves against orcas, who do sometimes hunt Blue whales)
- bmitc 3y agoOrcas are both dolphins and whales. I think it's pretty clear that the commenter meant other dolphins and whales.
- bmitc 3y agoFish-eating orcas have been observed communicating to dolphins in a way different from their normal orca dialects. The transient subtype of orcas eat dolphins and whales though, so I doubt there's much fraternization there. Humpback whales have been observed interrupting orca attacks on other humpback whales and even otber species.
- mxuribe 3y agoSo, it has begun! Soon the dolphins will fly off into space...and then, we'll be in quite the pickle as the rest of the plan deploys. ;-)
- LesZedCB 3y agoeh the highway probably has high utility value. just make it quick and painless.
- olliecornelia 3y agoThey're about to enter the "find out" phase.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoOr we are.
- olliecornelia 3y agoI don’t know, humans are very good at killing cetaceans.
- neom 3y agoSome video footage of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwz8FTAgW-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwz8FTAgW-M
- amadazia 3y agoI wonder why intelligent species in the sea are revelling? Could it be sonar, shipping noise, food chain disturbance. We trousered apes are so primitive and utterly dim when it comes to interspecies communication.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> We trousered apes are so primitive and utterly dim when it comes to interspecies communication I know this is a common and cute framing. But it's escapist. We're the planet's apex species using our unrivaled control to make it uninhabitable for other complex life. The Earth may not care about the damage we're doing, but the species that are dying would prefer not to. There isn't a rebellion they can mount against us. Their entire survival depends on our giving a shit.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoIt's also completely wrong when you consider the number of domesticated animals that need to be communicated with by humans on a daily basis. My wife's a horse trainer: she just finished doing exactly that a few minutes ago.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoWe think we are the apex species but at some point we'll meet a fungi or bacteria strain that's way more apex than we are.
- snapcaster 3y agoI don't know about that, it seems like many have tried and humans beat all of them
- permo-w 3y agothis is the crux of the matter. as a species we’re so careless that if this is a warning or revenge for something, we don’t know what because there are too many options to choose from. this whole thread is an illustration of that. "could it be noise pollution?". "has an influential orca been hit by a rudder?”. "perhaps it's overfishing?", etc. even if it’s none of those things, and this is just a fad, it’s a sorry state of affairs
- pvaldes 3y agoThey finally discovered that boats may contain a layer of yummy immigrants (or delicious drug packets?)
- Obscurity4340 3y agoDo orcas like drugs? I feel like cocaine or methamphetamine would be barrels of fun for them
- pvaldes 3y ago... Aaand here comes the plot twist in this thread!: https://www.euronews.com/2022/02/11/spanish-police-bust-drugs-ring-simulating-orca-attacks-to-aid-smuggling-into-ports https://www.euronews.com/2022/02/11/spanish-police-bust-drug... I bet that you didn't see it coming. Me neither ;-)
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoWe already tried that with bears!
- 11235813213455 3y agoor a fishing boat with the tunas they couldn't find
- benbojangles 3y agoCocaine Orca?
- victorbstan 3y agoThe animal revolution has begun. Death to humans!
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoAbout bloody time
- Ccecil 3y agoSaid it years ago in another post when this same thing came up. Maybe the autorudder is the issue. PWM noise. In the previous article there was mention that the boats had autorudders on them. Perhaps this is happening more because more people are using invasive noise producing equipment. Of course...I am not an Orca researcher, nor am I in Spain. I wonder if it should be mentioned to someone official?
- AYBABTME 3y agoPretty much all boats have autopilots on them, and for a while. Nothing new here.
- Ccecil 3y agoDo they all have the same kit? There are a lot of homebrew ones out there using stuff like windshield wiper motors hooked to off the shelf control circuitry [1]. It "functions" but has anyone looked into the effects? Doesn't hurt to see if there is a correlation. The video below is an example. It also has rudder feedback...so that very easily could cause an oscillating signal. Which would also vary in pitch as the rudder was hit by the Orca. I know I can hear PWM'ed stepper motors...and many younger people complain about them. I wonder what that sounds like to an animal which uses sonar and can hear different ranges. [1] https://youtu.be/-nA6wo9PXls?t=5 https://youtu.be/-nA6wo9PXls?t=5
- tejtm 3y agohmm I wonder if it could be something as simple as a "leafblower" effect with the non-analog mechanical seeking. Testable by decoupling the drive and or damping the rudder.
- Ccecil 3y agoCan you explain this more? Or link some stuff explaining more...would like to understand what you mean exactly.
- AHOHA 3y agoOrcas don’t eat humans, we are too bony for their taste, they also hunt in groups, and it seems we are not worth that coordination either, especially they follow their mother’s diet. So why the sudden attacks even though they know it’s for humans? No idea, but I’m sure they are either fed up with us or trying to hint something else.. or maybe as others suggested, some substance is the reason.
- sethammons 3y agoWhile orca attacks on humans are practically unheard of outside of aquariums, I've never heard anything about humans being too bony. Orcas eat moose and they are more bony than us I think.
- AHOHA 3y agoI remember I read it before but I can’t find the source, will update this comment if I find it. Keep in mind, Orcas don’t kill us either, not just as a food >"They're killing the porpoise, it's already dead or dying. And with one bite they can eat the whole thing. Yet these whales just don't see these porpoise as prey. And I think it's the exact same thing with humans—they don't see humans as prey. Thank goodness, they don't see humans as play toys.”(1) Sharks on the other hand, mostly they don’t eat the humans they kill, they just kill and probably realize we don’t taste that good after the first bite, but unlike Orcas, they are not as intelligent and/or able to teach and pass this info to their kids. (1) https://www.newsweek.com/there-no-records-orca-ever-killing-humans-wild-why-1734489?amp=1 https://www.newsweek.com/there-no-records-orca-ever-killing-...
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoOrcas are some of the smartest creatures around, it is entirely possible that they can see the connection between humans and ships and realise there is something going on
- 11235813213455 3y agoalso because white sharks visions is not as good as orcas
- amelius 3y agoThe problem is that once a whale gets run over by a ship, he/she will (somehow) tell the other whales that ships are "bad" and must be attacked. Then whales tell eachother that ships must be attacked, and this continues even after the original whale that got run over by a ship dies.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- codyb 3y agoTo be fair to the orcas, boats do seem to be awful for them. At the Seattle aquarium there's tons of information about how the noise from boats makes hunting much more difficult for orca pods. This was a sailing vessel but maybe they're unable to distinguish? Or maybe it was running it's motor, most sailing vessels of sufficient size have on board motors.
- m463 3y agoMaybe without a noisy motor it's like a "dead" or "sleeping" ship
- lisasays 3y agoI would put it this way: the "problem" is ships running over these poor whales. Not the whales doing what they've been doing for millions of years.
- potatototoo99 3y agoThat's counter to nature. Does the apex predator care how many millions of years the prey species has?
- stjohnswarts 3y agoModern medical care is counter to nature, shouldn't those humans that need medical attention, who are less able to survive, get out of the gene pool ?
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoThat's awesome. Good for them.
- honkycat 3y agoLove all of the empathy and love for these intelligent creatures in the comments. Sadly, humanity continues to over fish and poison their home in order to enrich the greedy of this work. Next time some fuckwad in a suite starts ranting about pronouns and religion, picture a baby whale being dragged to it's death by a fishing vessel. Picture a fishing vessel dumping massive amounts of plastic netting into the ocean. Picture the dead coral reefs, the baked dead fields ruined by rising temperatures. And ask yourself: Why are they talking about pronouns instead of something that actually fucking matters?
- cromulent 3y agoThere has been discussion about the rudder targeting behaviour over recent years being one of the latest adolescent fads. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/attacking-boats-may-be-a-new-social-trend-for-juvenile-orcas https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/attacking-boat...
- mzs 3y agovideo itself: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18290829034105710/ https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/182908290341057...
- notyourwork 3y ago> Login to view this story. Bummer.
- el_don_almighty 3y agoI, for one, welcome our new Orca overlords and look forward to working with them.
- drewmol 3y agoI was recently thinking about the potential failure modes of a worldwide sailing trip on a 60-80 ft vessel. Marooned by Orcas was not on the list… but it is now!
- RadixDLT 3y agothe whales has had enough
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoJesus Marie, they're dolphines!
- jmacjmac 3y agoIs there a way to scare them off? Some sort of sound maybe?
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoUnfortunately, there are too few orcas and too many boats to get any good results that way.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoWe're gonna need a bigger boat.
- meristohm 3y agoRecently finished reading A Whale of the Wild by Rosanne Parry[0] to my child and, like Parry's book A Wolf Called Wander, I was moved to tears. The author does a good job of trying to portray the animals as that species, not just personified as human (granted, I don't know what it's like to be an orca or a wolf, but my point is that it is important to try to empathize with other animals). It's a quick read if it was just you reading to yourself. In the story the orcas attempt to communicate with humans and also other orcas, which the author notes in the back that this was for the sake of the story and that we observe orcas from different groups going out of their way to avoid each other and thus avoid conflict. [0] https://www.worldcat.org/title/A-whale-of-the-wild/oclc/1225287628 https://www.worldcat.org/title/A-whale-of-the-wild/oclc/1225...
- Tiktaalik 3y agoIt's so curious that they're attacking sail boats of all things. You'd think these would be the most benign and least impactful of all possible boats on the Orca's environment.
- drewmol 3y agoI wonder if it has to do with the sails. Reflection is annoying to their hunting? Illuminating areas or providing shadow cover to their prey somehow?
- drewmol 3y agoIt seems that they are building artificial reefs.