Well played, sir! Well played!
Are orcas territorial? IIRC, all other mammalian apex predators are. Maybe that has something to do with it.
They are lulling us into complacency, just wait a bit…
By this logic, sharks shouldn’t eat humans either. Nor should lions, tigers, bears, and other apex predators.
But none of those predators - with the exception of sharks, whaich are basically pure killing machines - actively *hunt *humans. They’ll kill people if they annoy them, or scare them, or get in their way, or if they’re really hungry, but they rarely target them.
Maybe orcas are just amicable by nature, and rarely find reasons to kill humans?
Mild hijack:
Sharks don’t usually actually eat the humans they attack. Shark-researching types report that seal-eating shark species spot their prey from a distance by visual / water-motion cues and then go for a speed-rush attack; humans in wetsuits and on surfboards* are apparently sufficiently seal-like to be targeted, but once the shark has taken a nice big prey-incapacitating bite it generally realizes its mistake and leaves in disgust (sharks need a high-fat diet and most targeted humans are too skinny to bother with). Still may be fatal to the human, though.
*surfboards in particular seem to be shark magnets, to the extent that shark-spotting boats sometimes tow them as bait.
Indeed.
Now that the OP’s question has been answered, can we discuss the really interesting issue : what does an orca taste like?
Well, like mildly salty chicken.
I believe that most adults have a relative parity is size with the majority of alligators; plenty of smaller prey abounds in alligator country so why risk a fight with something your own size that just might injure you severely? I don’t believe they reason that out but I do believe it is instinctual. But I absolutely decline to put the theory to the test.
At SeaWorld Orlando, nearly all of the 8-odd orcas are raised in captivity; only 2-3 of those are actually allowed to perform with humans.
Most of them don’t have the temperament. They’re not necessarily dangerous, but they may be too playful- they’ll pull a trainer underwater and forget to let him surface. They also become very unpredictable when they’re ready to mate. The biggest one, Tilikum, is not allowed in the water with humans because he’s too dangerous.
So they’re not all that nice.
Anyway, apex predators aren’t necessarily mean. Lions and tigers can be trained quite readily.
Interesting juxtaposition of those sentences. ‘Ready to mate’ and ‘Til I Kum’.
I love the straight dope. Between the apocalyptic foreshadowing of dangerous appendage growing dolphins and the ejaculate-related play on words, I have plenty of reasons to renew my membership.
He was, in fact, directly involved in the death of a trainer in Victoria, BC.
AIUI, the woman wasn’t a trainer, but some other type of park employee who fell into the KW enclosure.
There was a drunk guy who jumped into his tank a few years back and was found dead the next morning, but it doesn’t appear that the whale had anything to do with his death- no bite marks (which the whale would certainly leave even if it was just trying to drag the guy around a bit), and the corpse was draped over the whale’s back, suggesting that the whale had actually tried to get him out of the water.
Ah, I see.
And was he not buck naked, suggesting faulty wiring? (His head, not the pool lights…)
Every apex predator has a strategy or instinct to stop it eating its own young. In fact most predators have a protective instinct that must be sufficiently strong, in the right circumstances, to overcome the impulse to kill and eat a vulnerable, smaller animal.
As stated, killer whales are learning creatures. They develop a sense of what their prey animals are. Exclude humans from that pool (Hah!), add in small-mammal-vulnerable-in-the-water and you are on the road to an answer.
Hippos are the ones to really watch out for! Those vegetarians just kill “BECAUSE” they don’t even use sharks as cover. If those buggers ever get thumbs mankind is DOOMED!
Though I hand fed a hippo and it was very cool…that cabbage was instant coleslaw!
Bah. Hippos are nothing more than ornery oversized water-pigs. No where near the long-term threat level of raccoons or other sneaky little bastards.
Eating the right things and expending energy on efficient eating is a favorable trait.
Not sure if there are perfect eaters anywhere who eat the most important thing to their diet 100% of the time, but it’s almost undeniable that there is an advantage to one’s survival if one makes good eating decisions.
Not a scientific article. I have heard some stories of whalers attacked by Orcas, but that may have been due to the fact that sometimes Orcas were collected by whalers. Also orca’s would attack the whale the whalers had caught, and if you are taking huge chomps of a whale and some dude slides off the side while flensing, it’s just another chomp.
My Dad lived amoung the Eskimo (Yupic mostly) prior to WWII, and according to him, Polar bear would occassional actively hunt Eskimo for food. The orca was not thought to hunt humans,* per se*, but it was thought unwise to “act like a seal” in certain areas, as the Eskimo claimed the Orca would break through thin ice near some breathing holes to ambush resting seals.
- Note that for the Alaskan Eskimo, “Eskimo” is not considered a perjoritive term, unless you are calling an Alaskan Indian by that term.