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Orcas, why don´t they EAT US???

Adam Khor

Ok here's an interesting topic for debate.

By now, it is a well known fact that killer whales have never been known to kill people in the wild. All fatal attacks have happened in captivity (for what I think are obvious reasons) and the dolphin didn´t eat its victim in any of these cases.

Why? Why is it that orcas and other large predatory cetaceans (false killer whale, pilot whales) don´t seem to regard humans as prey even though they have been known to hunt and kill practically everything in the sea (including other cetaceans) AND land animals they catch in the shore or as they swim from island to island?
Orcas are known to eat moose, deer, even bears! Yet, their reaction to humans is almost always one of curiosity, even friendly curiosity, instead of aggression. I could only find one case of killer whales attacking a boat- even then they didn´t touch the people that were on board.

I'd like to know what you all think.

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JuliusCaesar

Because we taste cr*p? (Although, how they know we taste bad I'd love to know, in the same way as I'd love to know HOW they knew the orca realised his prey wasn't a sealion.)

Adam Khor

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Because we taste cr*p? (Although, how they know we taste bad I'd love to know, in the same way as I'd love to know HOW they knew the orca realised his prey wasn't a sealion.)

Wow thanks for that link! So the Natsilane story was actually real

I think they mentioned it in the Free Willy movie (remote childhood memory

)

I don´t buy the idea that we simply taste bad. No other predator seems to dislike out taste (not even humans- those who have eaten human flesh say its quite good). Great white sharks may think we are too lean, but they do eat their victims sometimes.
It is true, however, that orcas are intelligent and have culture and even language (no reason to doubt this at this point). Maybe they did eat humans at one time but then eventually learned to stop when it became clear to them what humans could do?
Is it possible perhaps that they have a "rule" that says something like "you shall not hunt or eat humans, for that will only bring trouble"? Kinda like the jungle folks in Kipling's stories.

Orcas are puzzling animals. I have read about several cases in which the orcas have taken seals and other animals with the only purpose of teaching their young how to hunt, yet once the lesson is over, they take the seal and put it back, alive and physically unharmed, to the place where they took it.
On the other hand they are known to play with their prey rather brutally as well.
Complex little things...

Mickeroo

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?

KerranJast

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?

Wolf packs have been known to attack isolated humans in the past but over time they seem to have recognised humans as a threat so steer clear. A single human with a gun is a danger to any creature even a wolf pack.

As for Orcas it is very strange that there's no recorded incidents of attacks, even accidental nibbles. It's generally thought that Great whites confuse humans for seals and don't really like us as we're too lean and bony.

How Orcas aren't confused in the same manner or how they see us and us alone as unique I don't know.

Perhaps there's some behavioural thing that they've evolved from encounters with prehistoric human tribes. Native American fishermen in the North Pacific region followed Orca and dolphin pods as they lead them to salmon.

In Brazil bottlenose dolphins have evolved to work together with human fisherman to catch fish. The dolphins drive the fish towards the nets by beating the water with their tails and then they grab the stragglers that are disoriented by the netting and concussion so there's evidence there of learned behaviour between generations of cetacean.

Adam Khor

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

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!

Adam Khor

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.

Mickeroo

Came across this on reddit, some interesting behaviour from an Orca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b2U5r7Jwkc

Galvasean

I think it might be a similar reason to why lions don't attack the Masai anymore. If a lion killed a Masai the Masai would massacre many lions later so the lions quickly learned that killing a Masai was not worth the trouble. Perhaps killer whales once attacked people too but realised the grave consequences of such actions.
Another pet theory of mine is that killer whales may have viewed human whalers as an advantage. If larger whales escaped the whalers with injuries they may have been easy prey for the killer whales at a later time.

Mickeroo

Galvasean wrote: »

I think it might be a similar reason to why lions don't attack the Masai anymore. If a lion killed a Masai the Masai would massacre many lions later so the lions quickly learned that killing a Masai was not worth the trouble. Perhaps killer whales once attacked people too but realised the grave consequences of such actions.
Another pet theory of mine is that killer whales may have viewed human whalers as an advantage. If larger whales escaped the whalers with injuries they may have been easy prey for the killer whales at a later time.

Sounds pretty plausible to me. I find it hard to believe that orcas didn't at least try and hunt humans at one point considering they seem to be keen on having a go at just about everything else.

Galvasean

Mickeroo wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that orcas didn't at least try and hunt humans at one point considering they seem to be keen on having a go at just about everything else.

True. these are the guys who saw a great white shark and thought, "I'll have that".

PerrinV2

Adam Khor wrote: »

Agreed!

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

Tumbled into this thread by accident,very interesting read but whats this about rogue walruses?

Mickeroo

Galvasean wrote: »

True. these are the guys who saw a great white shark and thought, "I'll have that".

With a Polar Bear for dessert no doubt.

Ok I've done a little digging to avoid writing an essay and I came up with three instances of a wild orca attacking a human.

One was on Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition where an orca attempted to tip a dog sled off an ice flow although in that case it was thought the Orca mistook the dogs barking for seals.

The second was an attack on a surfer in 1972. This one is especialy interesting since it's the only one where the whale actually bit someone.

The third was in 2005 where a whale charged a boy swimming in Ketchikan.

The first and third one were pretty minor, the only would that seems like an out and out attack would be the one on the surfer IMO.

Adam Khor

Mickeroo wrote: »

The first and third one were pretty minor, the only would that seems like an out and out attack would be the one on the surfer IMO.

"The whole time he anticipated a crushing second attack. It never came".

This and the simple fact that the orca let go of him once again confirms that for some reason they do not see us as prey.
I have also failed to find any attacks by wild orcas that went beyond minor injuries. There is however one attack on a yatch recorded from 1972 (same year as the attack you mention).

"In 1972, a family named Robertson was attempting to circumnavigate he globe when they ran afoul a pod of orcas. The whales rammed the Robertson's 43-foot yatch, sinking it. The family and their crewman managed to stay afloat with the help of a dinghy and an inflatable raft. Once the yatch went down, the whales apparently lost interest, for they troubled the crew no further, though they could easily have finished them off if they had wanted to eat them"

From Gordon Grice's book on dangerous animals.

Mickeroo

JUst read this today, a study has found that Orcas possibly migrate from colder waters in order to exfoliate their skin rather than for feeding or breeding puproses:

The speed and duration of the voyages, undertaken individually, did not leave enough time for prolonged foraging, and would have been too demanding for a new-born calf.

"Remarkably, one whale returned to Antarctica after completing a 9,400 kilometre (5,840 mile) trip in just 42 days," the study said.

The varied departure dates, between early February and late April, also suggested these expeditions were not annual migrations for feeding or breeding.

Which is where skin comes into the picture.

Durban and Pitman suspect that killer whales move into warmer waters in order to shed a layer -- along with an encrustation of single-celled algae called diatoms -- without freezing to death.

Orcas are the smallest cetaceans -- a group including whales and dolphins -- which live for extended periods in subzero Antarctic waters. Replacing and repairing outer skin in waters where the surface temperature is minus 1.9 degree Celsius (28.6 degree Fahrenheit) may be dangerous, even lethal.

Surface temperatures at the killer whales' tropical destinations, by contrast, were a balmy 20.9 to 24.2 C (69.6 to 75.6 F).

"We hypothesise that these migrations were thermally motivated," the authors conclude.

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are the most widely distributed cetacean -- and perhaps mammal species -- in the world.

They haven't proven it conclusively but it seems like a plausible hypothesis. Who would have thought Orcas were so obsessed with wanting their skin to look pretty :pac:

Sid_Justice

Orcas are the smallest cetaceans -- a group including whales and dolphins

What does this mean? Orca's I always assumed was a name for killer whales, they're certainly not the smallest cetaceans as all dolphins and porpoises are smaller.

I wouldn't underestimate the significance of killing off external parasites. I was watching a tv show late last night which said that in times of war the biggest cause of death was typhus fever which is spread by lice.

As people wore their clothes constantly, perhaps washing them on occassion and putting them back on. The lice were able to survive because of the body temperature and the food course.

If anyone saw the film The Way Back which seems to be a rather fictional account of a groups escape from a Siberian Gulag you'll see a memorable scene. One of the guys buries his shirt in the snow and comes back the next day to see the lice all stone dead.

This is an example of the opposite, mammal needs to go do warm temperature to kill off parasite that likes cold temperature.

darjeeling

I think a plausible explanation is that orcas don't encounter humans often enough to have put us on their menu.

Orcas are known to have culturally-acquired eating habits (some pods prey on salmon, others on seals), and it may be that they don't like to venture outside the unknown. I dimly remember hearing in ecology lectures some time ago about predators avoiding unfamiliar prey (at least when adult), probably as a way of avoiding nasty surprises.

Where orcas have tried to wash humans from ice floes (and boats, according to the Frozen Planet team - listen to the accounts here), it might be that they don't know exactly what's up there to be washed down, only that it's a seal-sized thing, and so likely to be a seal.

darjeeling

Sid_Justice wrote: »

What does this mean? Orca's I always assumed was a name for killer whales, they're certainly not the smallest cetaceans as all dolphins and porpoises are smaller.

The broken-up sentence was a bit confusing, but I think they mean that orcas are the 'smallest cetaceans which live for extended periods in subzero Antarctic waters'

Mickeroo

Sid_Justice wrote: »

What does this mean? Orca's I always assumed was a name for killer whales, they're certainly not the smallest cetaceans as all dolphins and porpoises are smaller.

I think the full sentence is saying Orcas are the smallest cetaceans which live for extended periods in subzero Antarctic waters.

Technically Orca are dolphins afaik too, so not all dolphins are smaller

Adam Khor

darjeeling wrote: »

I think a plausible explanation is that orcas don't encounter humans often enough to have put us on their menu.

Orcas are known to have culturally-acquired eating habits (some pods prey on salmon, others on seals), and it may be that they don't like to venture outside the unknown. I dimly remember hearing in ecology lectures some time ago about predators avoiding unfamiliar prey (at least when adult), probably as a way of avoiding nasty surprises.

Where orcas have tried to wash humans from ice floes (and boats, according to the Frozen Planet team - listen to the accounts here), it might be that they don't know exactly what's up there to be washed down, only that it's a seal-sized thing, and so likely to be a seal.

True about their avoiding unfamiliar prey, but we would still have young orcas attacking humans once in a while if that was the explanation. And they encounter humans much more often than other predators known to attack us- such as, for example, the leopard seal.
As for their mistaking humans for seals, I guess its possible if they didn´t take a look at their prey first by peeking over the surface- which they almost always do BEFORE they attack. They can see pretty well so I doubt they would take a human for a seal.

Jumpy

Maybe they do it on porpoise.

Galvasean

Jumpy wrote: »

Maybe they do it on porpoise.

while having a whale of a time???????? :pac:

Mickeroo

Jumpy wrote: »

Maybe they do it on porpoise.

Galvasean wrote: »

while having a whale of a time???????? :pac:

Jumpy and Galvasean permabanned for punnery.

*just kidding*:pac:

KerranJast

Check out last weeks Frozen Planet (new BBC nature doc with Sir Dave) for some brilliant Orca action. They're scary mofos as a group when on the hunt.

al28283

Probably not enough fat on humans to be worth eating. We'd seem very bony compared to what they usually like to eat

Mickeroo

KerranJast wrote: »

Check out last weeks Frozen Planet (new BBC nature doc with Sir Dave) for some brilliant Orca action. They're scary mofos as a group when on the hunt.

Yea was waching it, pretty great footage. THey fairly like to play with their food!

dodderangler

im not a zoologist or anything but i do know that killer whales do not come across humans in the ocean enough for them to attack and to know us as edible prey there are different types of orcas out there as in different pods that feed on different food sources for instance there are the mammal pods that feed mainly or infact only on seals sea lions and dolphins then there in the fish eaters that will hunt schools of salmon mackerel herring and stingray or any fish it can sink teeth into and also squid and only eat them and there is the whale hunters and these are rare and can also be aggressive to the likes of boats but that they hunt whales and dolphins constantly travelling the globe and seeing to know when female humpbacks right whales etc are giving birth as to attack their young
so in order for us to be on the menu theyd need to encounter us alot more often in groups as to be an attraction hope this helped