I was reading on Wikipedia there are at least two types of Orcas, the kind that eat fish only, and the kind that eat mammals only. It says the mammal feeding ones don’t eat fish and the fish eating ones won’t eat mammals.
So what do zoos feed their orcas? Or arquariums or sea parks? Or do they only get the kind of orcas that eat fish? I grew up in Florida so I saw a lot of orcas in sea parks and they always are fed fish.
Or is Wikipedia wrong and the two kinds of orcas will eat what they’re fed?
Transient/Offshore Orcas are not the type captured and maintained in capitivity by Sea World, and various aquariums and display facilities.
The fish-eating orcas also (not really by chance) happen to be the Resident Orcas that live in shallow coastal waters and are therefore easy to capture. (Most of the captured Orcas are from Icelandic, Norwegian, or North American coastal waters.)
I suppose if you had a transient/offshore Orca in captivity, it would eventually switch to eating whatever you might feed it, but I’m not aware of any captured transient Orcas.
Mostly captive but some success at breeding. Also, artificial insemination is used as well to allow for more genetic diversity between aquariums (moving orcas around for purposes of breeding is, I’d imagine, a pain in the butt).
The two “kinds” of Orcas are physiologically identical. They have distinct food choices and ranges that differentiate them. If a transient Orca were to be captured and put into an aquarium, it would eat whatever it was given - there is no reason to think otherwise.
Some have speculated that these two populations are in the process of speciating - that is, given a whole lot more time, and no cross-breeding between the two types, eventually there will be not just two populations, but two distinct species. These two species might then begin to show physiological and morphological differences so that we could tell them apart by sight, rather than just behaviourally.
We can actually tell them apart visually (cite: http://www.orcanetwork.org/nathist/transients.html although you’re right that they are physiologically identical) although the differences are subtle, primarily restricted to the non-open shapes of the saddle patch posterior to the dorsal fin and, in females, the position of the midpoint of the dorsal fin relative to its anterior and posterior base. I had the good luck to find a pod of transients in the San Juan Straits this July, so the identification question is fresh in my memory.
There are lots of zoo animals that eat only mammals. The Orcas are probably used to eating sea mammals, but I imagine that beef, chicken, deer, etc, whatever they feed lions and such would be just as good, as long as they get the fat/protein balance right.