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Orcas are learning terrifying new behaviors. Are they getting smarter?
- h2odragon 3y agoPreviously people whose boats were attacked by orca were likely to have reacted forcefully. Killing might not be required even, just enough force to communicate "these creatures bite back." Human societies tend to lose those lessons after 3 or 4 generations, too. Then someone has to learn again the hard way.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DrThunder 3y agoI agree... in the past they would have gotten harpooned and quickly communicated to others that going near human boats was a bad idea. I think coming up with some non-lethal way of deterring them might be a good idea. A killer whale taser of some sort. Just sitting there watching it tear your boat to shreds seems like a bad idea.
- h2odragon 3y agoseems to me we otter be able to come up with an underwater siren or some such that they find intolerable but not actually injurious
- DrThunder 3y agoYeah that might work as well. A taser isn't going to injure them, but yes it would be painful initially.
- quesera 3y agoCan you (effectively, safely) Tase things which are swimming in salty ocean water?
- DrThunder 3y agoNot sure with something that big but biologists electrocute smaller fish in rivers/lakes all the time so they can tag them. Mammals are different, but you're not trying to knock it out, only dissuade it from coming closer.
- jacquesm 3y ago> Human societies tend to lose those lessons after 3 or 4 generations, too. Then someone has to learn again the hard way. Human societies usually lose all lessons after exactly 1 generation.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoHence the wolves debate.
- pjmlp 3y agoAs we can see all across Europe, as apparently the younger generations have no idea what many of the goverments looked like until the late 70's.
- jacquesm 3y agoNor how fascism took root.
- donatj 3y agoThis brings up for me an interesting question. Does the rise of intelligence in one creature put an evolutionary pressure towards it in other species, and how rapidly can that manifest. We’ve certainly bred dogs for intelligence, border collies are genuinely amazing creatures and that developed in a somewhat human time scale.
- DarknessFalls 3y agoIt would certainly exert an "adapt or die" pressure on that species' prey and their competition in the food chain. Although, nature seldom selects for intelligence.
- mannykannot 3y agoWe are demonstrating now that, in addition to these issues, a great many species are incurring collateral damage, up to and including extinction, from the indirect environmental consequences of our evolutionary fitness. While, in general, it seems that nature seldom selects for intelligence, over the last ~5 million years there was an evolutionary radiation of hominins, now collapsed down to just our own species. While the causes of this history are not clear, it seems plausible that cognitive developments played a role.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoThe whole point of intelligence is the ability to learn. This might just be a case of an animal that already evolved to have intelligence learning and adapting. Orcas are social animals that communicate and and interact. So, they might show collective behavior and the ability to adapt as a group. And obviously we've been hunting them to extinction and generally harassing them in their own natural habitat; even imprisoning them. They'd be well excused to hold a few grudges. The good news is that they could adapt again if we respect them.
- m_a_g 3y agoThe first image is quite disturbing. I wasn't ready for that. Maybe we need tags for those kinds of images.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- YouSuck2 3y agoNot relevant... contact the admins
- kaliqt 3y agoI'm going to be honest, here we are techies which are supposed to be intellectual to an extent. We should be able to handle more violent truths natively: e.g. seeing images like that. Through understanding, we can dismiss a chunk of the fear/repulsion we might feel for images such as those.
- colanderman 3y agoWe're not all robots. Images have emotional impact.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agothere is no "we" on a website like this and most readers here are certainly not intellectual. maybe intellectual to an extent ... but everybody is intellectual to an extent.
- itishappy 3y ago> here we are techies which are supposed to be intellectual to an extent. We should be able to handle more violent truths natively I think many view stoicism in the face of such imagery to be a sign of an enlightened mind, but I disagree. Empathy is a form of intelligence. The images from the article are disturbing, and I'd argue they should be. That so many of us are quick to discount the obvious pain and suffering within is concerning to me, and I'd even label it a deficiency. We should feel upset by death and dismemberment.
- dj_mc_merlin 3y ago> It's not likely that orcas' brains are changing on an anatomical level, said Josh McInnes, a marine ecologist who studies orcas at the University of British Columbia. "Behavioral change can influence anatomical change in an animal or a population" — but only over thousands of years of evolution, McInnes told Live Science. > But orcas are fast learners, which means they can and do teach each other some terrifying tricks, and thus become "smarter" as a group. It feels weird to use quotations on "smarter" or pretend this is a complicated concept when it's just describing how humans achieved greater intelligence faster than the speed of evolution.
- OJFord 3y agoI read that as acknowledging that it was personifying (or animalifying rather) the group, a group doesn't really have an intelligence level to go up or down, to get smarter, but we know what we mean by that so it's a useful shorthand, but hence the scare-quotes. Not saying I'm necessarily right, just that was my interpretation before I saw your comment.
- ysavir 3y agoImagine if someone used those scare-quotes when talking about a group of humans. I don't know if they intended them as a form of personification, but it's surely unnecessary either way.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago> It feels weird to use quotations on "smarter" or pretend this is a complicated concept when it's just describing how humans achieved greater intelligence faster than the speed of evolution. It’s in quotes because the orca did not become smarter. If you replace orca with human, the quotes would still make sense.
- amelius 3y agoSmarter but less empathic.
- DarknessFalls 3y agoThe first thing that came to mind, apart from what the article mentions with regard to our increased capacity for observation, was the increase in ocean temperatures and decrease in pH in some places. This could gradually induce psychosis in an intelligent species. Their water is slowly becoming battery acid and the food is becoming more scarce. Any being of sufficient cognitive ability would take these environmental pressures to cruel extents.
- chasd00 3y agoWow is there anything climate change can’t explain?
- DarknessFalls 3y agoNo, but it certainly is a testament to pervasive greed and willful ignorance. Know what I mean?
- leereeves 3y agoIt's called ocean "acidification" for some reason, but in fact the ocean is alkaline and is becoming closer to neutral pH. (down from 8.15 to 8.05, neutral is 7) It's far from "slowly becoming battery acid".
- DarknessFalls 3y agoYes, I know what ocean acidification is. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/ocean-acidification-what-you-need-know https://www.nrdc.org/stories/ocean-acidification-what-you-ne... Note, the first link mentions a 30 percent increase in the average acidity of seawater. So if the ocean is around a pH of 8.1 and is heading south due to absorbing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere, doesn't it stand to reason that more pollution -> more co^2 -> lower pH over time? Eventually, we could reach acidic ocean temperatures everywhere which would be catastrophic, no? And it already is catastrophic in ways we've measured, for example its impact on coral reefs which are some of the more delicate habitats in our oceans. So my claim that our oceans are "slowly becoming battery acid" isn't far from the truth if you look at the data and stop to consider what's happening.
- thriftwy 3y agoI wonder if we could produce some toys for Orcas and then offer these to them to induce bonding, then try communicating.
- chasd00 3y agoAll the behaviors described in the article don’t seem that new to me. I was expecting the (decade old?) clip of a pod working together to wash a stranded seal off a chunk of ice to be mentioned but it wasn’t
- mannykannot 3y agoThe article mentions that they typically prey on Weddell seals in this manner, but have now adapted this form of attack to go after Leopard and Crab seals, which make less use of floes and are "more feisty". It does not say how these attacks have been adapted.
- francisofascii 3y ago> But this is probably not a new behavior — just a case of humans finally seeing it up close. > "Because there are more cameras and more boats, we're starting to see these behaviors that we hadn't seen before," We now all have video/camera evidence of why ancient sailors called Orcas "killer whales."
- hdjdbdjdk 3y agoThey're called killer whales because they kill other whales.
- wly_cdgr 3y agoThey are literally playing catch with baby porpoises & I think it's just because it's the closest they can find to a ball.
- jacquesm 3y agoAn Orca likely sees a boat the way you look at the wrapper around a tasty snack.
- quesera 3y agoFortunately, they have not yet developed a taste for humans. Neither liver nor tongue. As far as we know.
- henearkr 3y agoCould the spreeding of violent behaviors be a consequence of the increase in mercury pollution? In which case we would just have ourselves to blame... and a moral duty to medically help them...
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- jnsaff2 3y agoThere is a really good book that starts with the same plot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(Sch%C3%A4tzing_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_(Sch%C3%A4tzing_nove...