Filter feeding animals such as many types of whales and the largest fish of them all, the whale shark, are large and seemingly have no defense against predators except for their size. Perhaps a pod of huge whales would be too intimidating to most sharks…but what about a whale shark? What’s stopping a pack of hungry sharks from ripping them apart? Is their skin too thick?
Toothed whales often do attack and eat filter feeding whales.
Not sure on the shark thing - guessing it’s just a matter of preference.
Very few sharks hunt in packs. I think that some hammerheads do, but they’re built to hunt smaller game.
The only toothed whale I’ve heard of doing this is the orca. Are there others?
I want to say yes, but I can’t think of any, so I’ll say no.
A really interesting thing about Orcas: There are two entirely seperate orca cultures out there - one group won’t touch other mammals, and the other will hunt just about anything. They’re biologically the same, but they’ve socially developed this policy.
I thought that was fascinating.
There are also, IIRC, some pods who stay pretty close to a “local” range; a home base; and some pods who travel the oceans blue.
Sperm whales
According to National Geographic, the friendlier, fish-eating orcas stick to a home base, while the transient mammal-eaters travel in deeper waters.
Including killer whales under the banner of toothed whales seems awfuly broad. Killer whales are porpoises, and quite distinct from sperm whales and the like that are normally termed toothed whales.
Anyway, back to the question, sharks and killer whales do routinely attack juvenile whales, and the fear of shark attack is what drives humpback whales to undertake long migrations into warmer waters where really large sharks don’t live.
Adult whales are nowhere near as helpless as the might seem. That tail is capable of generating immense force, more than sufficient to kill a shark or killer whale. That makes adult whales a less than easy meal.
Why whale sharks aren’t attacked I couldn’t say. They may also be capable of inflicting serious damage if they need to. But I think the key reason is simply that they don’t overlap very much with large predatory sharks. Whale sharks are essentially equatorial animals, the larger sharks like the great white are primarily cold water species. With limited overlap there is limited opportunity for attacks to occur.
Common Name; killer whale (also known as orca)
Scientific Name; Orcinus orca
Scientific Classification
Kingdom; Animalia (all animals)
Phylum; Chordata (have a developed notochord)
Subphylum; Vertebrata (all animals with backbones)
Class; Mammalia (warm-blooded, bear live young and have mammary glands)
Order; Cetacea (all whales, dolphins, & porpoises)
Suborder; Odontoceti (all toothed whales)
Family; Delphinidae (all ocean dolphins)
Genus; Orcinus
Species; orca
Forgot to add they’re NOT porpoises!
Porpoises are a different family,
Suborder Odontoceti, Family Phocoenidae.
http://www.theporpoisepage.com/porpvdolph.php
http://www.wdcs.org/dan/publishing.nsf/allweb/0FA59830072550DD802568F8004BDD88
Googling doesn’t seem to produce any references to sperm whales preying on baleen whales.
The sites I’ve checked agree with crowmanyclouds: Killer whales are toothed whales, and are not classified as porpoises. Perhaps there’s an alternate classification?
The only toothed whales that are truly like sperm whales are the pygmy sperm whale and the dwarf sperm whale. A bunch of species are classified as beaked whales, but most of these seem at least as different from sperm whales as orcas are. Again, there may perhaps be alternate classification schemes that take a different view (though I haven’t had much luck Googling for them).
I was really hoping that we would be talking about Xenomorphs and what-not. 