Orcas, why don´t they EAT US???

Mickeroo wrote: »

Maybe because of their level of intelligence they recognise us as being different and don't see us as prey? I try not to fall into the trap of over anthropmorphisising animals too much, especially when it comes to cetaceans, which I have a particular soft spot for

Is there not a similar thing with wolves where a healthy one has never been recorded to attack a human? I was told its a myth and I have heard stories of people being stalked by packs of wolves perhaps it could be a similar story with Orcas?

Wolves are smart enough to keep away from humans most of the time but they DO attack and eat people even in modern times. I am always surprised when people says that there are "no recorded attacks". I wonder if it may be a conservationist strategy- keep people convinced that wolves are not so bad, that they are actually harmless to humans. But I believe painting wolves as saints is almost as bad as painting them as demons. They ARE dangerous predators and when the circumstances are right they regard us as prey like most other predators do.

An interesting and similar case are jaguars. Today, jaguars rarely attack people (although they do at times, usually in remote places and usually only when the victim is alone). Jags were, however, recognized as truly dangerous by the prehispanic cultures in the New World, and feared as potential man-eaters.
Even later Darwin and Roosevelt talked about jaguar attacks, but in the XX and XXI centuries attacks by jaguars become almost unheard of.
Even though they are solitary animals and probably don´t have so much of a culture like cetaceans or even wolves, jaguars had learned that humans were too dangerous to hunt, and stopped doing it almost completely. It was not simply a matter of "there are less jaguars today, hence the rarity of attacks". Jaguars went as far as to becoming more nocturnal wherever humans were found. Near human settlements, it seems, jaguars come out only at night, whereas in remote places where they aren´t hunted or disturbed, they are quite active during day.

I guess this adds to the idea that orcas- social animals with great communication skills and a culture of their own- probably learned over generations to avoid humans. I believe that perhaps, in ancient times, killer whales DID eat humans several times.

BTW, interesting fact: the pygmy killer whale (Feresa attenuata), a smallish dolphin only distantly related to the orca, has been said to act aggressively around humans both in captivity and in the wild. Someone has even compared their behavior as similar to that of sharks.
They also attack other cetaceans. Yet, once again, there are no reports of anyone actually being eaten by them.

Mickeroo wrote: »

Thats a very good point about learning the behaviour over a few generations you both mentioned. They have had a very long time to become accustomed to us, I'm sure there must have been some incidents going back far enough, could be worth quizzing a few Inuit elders about any stories handed down over a few generations maybe!

Agreed!

Maybe we'll be surprised... like we were with rogue walruses.