I don’t think so. I’ve lived here for over 40 years and I’ve never heard of several swimmers being taken in the same area within a week.
In fact fatal shark attacks are quite rare here, despite what you hear. We would average less than one a year around the whole country, I’d say.
No dates or places are given, but if it was only “several years ago” and came on the back of a number of shark-attack deaths in the space of a week, I’m sure that it would have been given a lot of space in the press. I don’t recall it at all.
http://www.cnn.com/EARTH/9710/08/whale.vs.shark/
Not the case you were looking for, but a documented case of an Orca killing a Great White in protection of her calf.
And whoever thinks that orcas have some sort of “protector” instinct for other animals has obviously never seen the videos of them slapping around a baby seal with their tails before they eat it. An orca might attack a shark, but only to eliminate the competetion.
I don’t think this story would be impossible, but from what I can tell it didn’t actually happen.
An orca is a pretty damn intelligent carnivore. Like a lot of other mammalian carnivores we see on land it wouldn’t surprise me at all if orca notices there’s a somewhat large predator in his/her territory, and decides to deal with it by killing said predator.
Dolphins have been known to protect humans from sharks
For some reason both Dolphins and Orcas seem to have friendly instincts towards man. Whether the latter would defend people against sharks, I don’t know.
Yes, I’ve read that story. The question for me is, did those dolphins know they were protecting humans, or were they instinctively protecting some silly looking, and apparently stupid & helpless fellow dolphins?
Are we anthropomorphizing them, or are they capable of anthropomorphizing (dolphinomorphizing?) us?
Dolphins attack humans too. They’re not actually the plush toys they are made out to be.
Anyhoo, predators defend their territory from other predators. Even if this story is true, why should we assume the Orca did it for the humans and not just taking out an aggressive competitor.
crap… or what Martin Hyde said
It’s their way of saying “Thanks for all the fish.”
The “So long” will come later.