Posted on 11/03/2025 10:32:23 AM PST by Red Badger
Warmer waters might be bringing more juvenile white sharks to the Gulf of California, where they are easy prey for killer whales, say researchers.
Researchers have filmed orcas bringing down juvenile great white sharks in the Gulf of California. They say this is the first record of killer whales hunting juvenile white sharks in Mexican waters, and the second globally.
To take down their prey, the killer whales flip the young sharks belly up to put them into a state of paralysis called tonic immobility. When the orcas have subdued the shark, they rip out and feast on its energy-rich liver, which is full of nutrients.
Immobilising the shark by turning it upside down likely makes it easier for the orcas to quickly kill their prey and avoid a nasty bite. “The lack of bite marks or injuries anywhere other than the pectoral fins shows a novel and specialised technique of accessing the liver of the shark with minimal handling of each individual,” write the authors in a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
VIDEO AT LINK...........
Footage shows the orcas ramming and submerging young white sharks in the Gulf of California. Credit: Erick Higuera | Marco Villegas
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This is the same technique killer whales use to hunt whale sharks – the largest fish in the ocean.
“This behaviour is a testament to orcas’ advanced intelligence, strategic thinking, and sophisticated social learning, as the hunting techniques are passed down through generations within their pods,” says the study’s lead author Erick Higuera Rivas, project director at Conexiones Terramar and Pelagic Life.
he killer whales belong to Moctezuma’s pod; a group already known to eat sharks and rays. The researchers wonder whether these orcas are benefiting from warmer waters, which may have changed the distribution of white shark nurseries and lead to more juveniles being present in the Gulf of California where these orcas live.
"Juveniles tend to congregate during their first years in coastal nursery areas making an easy repeatable target,” says co-author Salvador Jorgensen, a marine ecologist at California State University Monterey Bay.
Orcas are known to hunt adult white sharks but juveniles might be easier for them to catch because they haven’t yet learned to avoid the threat of killer whales.
“Adult white sharks have demonstrated an incredible ability to immediately vacate their preferred hunting ground in a mass exodus if orcas appear,” says Jorgensen. “If the juveniles have not yet developed similar anti-predator mechanisms, the white sharks population could become vulnerable.”
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Don’t they know the great whites are an endangered species? I’m calling the environmentalists!
I recall a video from the Farallon Islands in Northern Californa of a group of Killer Whales killing a very large White Shark by ramming it in the gills and tearing it to pieces to remove and eat just the liver. Same exact thing happened in a video from Australia.
I wonder if they learned this in school.
“I wonder if they learned this in school.”
I think they go around in “pods”. When they communicate, it is by podcast.
The article said it was “strategic thinking”. I’d call that a no-brainer.
I wonder if this is a recent development of have they been doing this forever and we just now noticed will all our technology?.............
Is this a positivin or a negativin?
A positive I think. Orcas are usually not a danger to humans..........
I wonder if they eat the livers and wash it down with a nice Chianti.
Interesting thing, Orcas don't seem to be overly interested in attacking humans. I think they are smart enough to figure out that will bring results they don't want.
Check out this video (full link below)
LINK: Penguin chased by a pack of Orcas saves itself from certain death
In this video, a penguin is being chased by a pack of Orcas. This spunky little guy manages to save himself by jumping into a boat (an inflatable boat!) full of tourists!
This Penguin became my hero. After he went under the boat and leaped into it from the opposite side to the astonishment of the watching humans, instead of cowering in fear on the bottom of the boat, he leaps up onto the slick side and parades in front of the disappointed orcas, who look at him sideways before swimming away in defeat!
Part of me suspects that is how the Mexican indigenous people (who were hunted and captured by the Aztecs for human sacrificial purposes) felt about Cortez. They may not have known much about them, but they knew a lot about the Aztecs, so Cortez became their new best friend, in the way these humans in the linked video became the new best friends of the penguin!
This was how I envisioned the Penguin:
Now, with no effort at all, the Orcas, who are CLEARLY not afraid of the humans in the boat, could have just tipped the raft and had their meal.
But they didn't. They sidled up to the boat, looked at the penguin who appeared to feel perfectly safe, and after eyeballing the humans, just swam away.
People may say I am anthropomorphizing those orcas, and I plead guilty, but I think they are intelligent enough to know that mangling or eating humans is not worth the problems it would bring down on them.
I believe they do a calculus, and decide to cut their losses and look for another meal. I really do think they are intelligent enough to understand that.
Interestingly, in the Shackleton Expedition, they saw huge blocks of ice that had been displaced by Orcas bursting through the sheet ice to get at seals and penguins on top, but...they simply looked at the humans with curiosity and showed no inclination to attack. Shackleton and his crew were quite wary of them and thought they would attack them the same they did the seals and penguins, but the Orcas never did.
Maybe we taste bad.........
Dang! I just assumed we tasted like chicken to them!
You have to pick your battles. Even if you're an orca.
They must have picked up "The Art of War" on a podcast.
"He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. "
where ever they learned it, they learned it well...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RMendL0uPB0
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0uKpKImqaH0
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GtcO8P5BKic
https://youtu.be/3i1SaNuLNZw?t=17
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XFma4hX960U
It's better with onions.
...
If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away.
Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!
...
“Dang! I just assumed we tasted like chicken to them!“
Cannibals call us “long pig“, so probably pork.
They are really killer dolphins, not killer whales.
This is learned behavior. There are killer whale pods off the coast of Kommiefornia that teach the trick to their young. They’ve also been filmed around Antarctica teaching their calves how to hunt seals.
It’s like the humpback whales blowing bubble nets as a deception to cause their prey to form tight groups. It’s only been observed IIRC in three locations globally. One of them is in Puget sound, where only two pods know how to blow them. And they teach the trick to their young.
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