So what up with this? Killer Whales seem to like people ok. They don’t go around eating us. They let us train them in parks and shit. There have only been a few incidents where a killer whale hurt someone and even then it does not seem that the killer whale was trying to kill the person. I can’t think of any other apex predators that will hang out and chill with people. Why do they get along with us? Why not just eat us?
I’ve wondered this too. Especially if you compare them to other apex predators, such as lions, tigers, polar bears, etc that regularly maul people to death.
Even Pandas, mother nature’s ‘special ed’ student of the animal kingdom, are more dangerous to humans it seems 
Wild orcas would eat a human in an instant, if the opportunity arose. No different than lions, tigers, wolves, etc. Eskimo lore is replete with stories of orca predation on humans.
Anthropomorphism is foolish, animals are animals.
Cite?
(sorry, couldn’t resist. FWIW, I agree)
What spike404 said.
Also, i’ve seen plenty of lions and tigers that “let us train them in parks and shit.” Hell, some people have big cats living in their houses. Orcas aren’t exactly unique in the “hang out and chill with people” category.
My WAG is that orcas hang around in waters too cold for anything other than a wetsuit, while sharks (apt counterexample) can be found across a very wide temperature spectrum, including many warm water beaches with large #s of swimmers. Even then the number of fatal shark attacks worldwide/year is quite small.
There’s the hypothesis that two subspecies of orca exist, one that eats fish, and a more rare type that goes after seals and even other whales.
The ones in animal parks are the former, most likely. In the wild, people don’t tend to swim or scuba dive in their habitat anyway.
Watch the original ABC’s documentary Killers in Eden for a startling case of a mysterious partnership between wild killer whales and whalers on the south east coast of Australia. After a quick Google it seems that PBS have run the program in the US, I don’t know how you can watch it but the trailer is here. It’s remarkable that the killer whales had plenty of opportunities to eat the whalers but they didn’t.
The answer is really very simple.
We smell & taste nothing like fish.
A human in the water gives off the aquatic equivalent of smell. And so does all our scuba gear.
and bottom line: we stink.
Yes, I’m kidding, but only a little.
Alligators aren’t too bad either (although crocodiles are). I have swum in alligator infested water many times in my native Louisiana without being too nervous unless they came too close. I wouldn’t let my young daughters do it but alligators are the stoners of the large reptilian world. They can easily take a person out or, more likely, a small dog, but they generally shy away from humans despite the fact that they can be extremely fast and powerful. Generally, when they kill a person, it is due to extenuating circumstances.
Some animals, even reptiles, know their place and have a healthy respect for humans.
I don’t agree with this. The waters around Vancouver Island, The Gulf Islands, and Puget Sound are full of both killer whales and sea kayakers. The whales there have plenty of opportunities to snack on sea kayakers and yet I have never heard of a single case. Close encounters between kayakers and killer whales are not uncommon and for the most part it seems the whales couldn’t care less.
Orcas are smart enough to leave no witnesses and to plant evidence that implicates sharks. Sure they act all “Hello Warm-Blooded Brother” when anyone is watching, but don’t let them fool you. They are as evil as the day is long.
If they develop thumbs we are all fucked.
Yeah, like the dolphins. We’ve all heard the stories of dolphins saving drowning humans. But you never hear anything from the humans the dolphins got!
That true… lions, tigers, and all other well-fed animals aren’t that bad. You can put your head in their mouth, etc. But they do kill people. Orcas simply don’t. Even the mammal-eating Orcas (distinct from the fish-eating Orcas) don’t seem fond of us.
Wild Orcas literal seem to have killed noone. cite. Zoo Orcas killed a trainer once. cite. Although there were a number of cases where an Orca bit or somehow messed with a human. The first article I linked to relates the story of a boy that was splashing around like a seal. An Orca came up to him and poked him, but then went away when it saw who it was.
Orcas are related to dolphins (rather than whales). Maybe they’re just really smart and/or kind and/or picky eaters? (Apparently when the mammal-eating Orca subspecies was brought into a zoo, they’d sooner starved to death than ate fish.)
The end is nigh!
Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs
As for the OP, humans are also an apex predator, and we (generally speaking) don’t go around willy nilly eating everything in sight. Perhaps as an evolved mammal the orcas have standards on what they eat, just as we say cow is fine, bats are not. (again, generally speaking)
“…Orcas are related to dolphins (rather than whales)…”
Orcas and dolphins are whales. There are two basic types of whales–toothed, and baleen. Toothed, certainly implies predation.
“…Wild Orcas literal seem to have killed noone…”
Well, I guess the Eskimos, with thousands of years of observation, were wrong? Also, the early arctic/antarctic explorers were also wrong when they recorded being stalked by orcas? What about leopard seals? Are they also so benelovent?
That seems to me to be largely cultural. If you watch the Travel Channel, you’ll see that plenty of people eat bats. If it’s edible, there’s somebody somewhere eating it.
What about the documentary Orca: Killer Whale, starring Bo Derek?
There was a killer whale in that movie? 
I did not see one…
Explain the feet that keep bobbing ashore.
Orcas are dolphins, but whether dolphins are a type of whale is still open to debate. Some class dolphins as a type of whale other scientists place them in their own group.
There are two kinds of Orca, the resident Orcas eat fish and don’t migrate. The transient Orca eat mostly seals but also eat whales, birds and even sea otters.
Part of the thing I’m wondering is maybe there are so few attacks because Orcas and humans don’t really mix a lot. People and Crocs for example long co-exist. So do lions and people.
How many people hang around tranisent orcas? It may be a case of not enough cases to produce meaningful statistics.
It could also be orcas hunt in packs while sharks tend not to. Also sharks basically just bite their prey and let it bleed to death. I am not sure how tranisent orcas hunt.