Why are killer whales attacking boats?

BBC Discover Wildlife ^ | 23/10/23 | Mark Carwadine

[Eleutheria5]

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If you were to believe the press and social media, we’re in the midst of a ‘killer whale uprising’. But claims about their murderous intent are blatantly untrue. The evidence doesn’t stand up. Killer whales do attack, and sometimes kill, trainers in captivity (not surprisingly) but, unlike polar bears, great white sharks and many other top predators, they have never killed a person in the wild.

How many attacks have taken place? So what’s happening? Since May 2020, there have been more than 500 reported attacks on sailing boats, as well as some fishing boats, RIBs and motorboats. It began in the Strait of Gibraltar, but the number and range of incidents has rapidly increased in the years since.

The ‘attack zone’ now extends up the Atlantic coasts of Portugal, Spain and France; and, in June, a yacht was ambushed off the coast of Shetland (the first incident recorded in northern waters). No-one has been harmed. The culprits are just a handful of whales, although others may be learning the behaviour.

Are the attacks triggered by a traumatic incident such as a collision with a boat or entanglement in fishing gear, as many claim? Or is it really an act of revenge for centuries of maltreatment and neglect? ...

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A key piece of evidence is that they usually attack the boat rudders. Research with dummy rudders suggests that they are pushing them, rather than biting. Once a rudder breaks, the whales usually swim away. That doesn’t sound like aggression to me. If they really wanted to, they could sink a small yacht in minutes. (Breaking a rudder could open a hole in the hull, of course, which might explain why three of the 500-plus boats sank.)

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TOPICS: Humor; Pets/Animals; Science; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: boatattacks; europe; killerwhale; killerwhales; ocean; orca; orcas; whales; wildlife

[Eleutheria5]

Dogs and horses can understand human speech, too. BFD.

[Dr. Franklin]

They are aware that we call them “killer whales” and not their preferred “orcas”. So now they are pranking us until we get the message. They are just prankster whales, not killers.

[Eleutheria5]

They object to the racist term “killer whale”. It’s profiling and stereotyping without any factual basis.

[Pelham]

It’s payback for our 19th Century slaughter of their whale cousins.

[Dr. Franklin]

They object to the racist term “killer whale”. It’s profiling and stereotyping without any factual basis.

But only the orcas which are blacker than the other lighties.

[blackdog]

Because the other species “Mostly Peaceful” whales are interested in doing Whaley things? Anyone check those killer whales for piercings, and swimming in patterns to the left?

[TheWriterTX]

Now that’s funny!

[rlmorel]

“BFD”? Really. Didn’t expect that kind of dismissive answer from you.

Can dogs and horses string together different commands in sequence, in different orders without being trained by rote fashion in advance to do that?

[Eleutheria5]

That depends on how well-trained they are. They’ve been used in circuses and on TV and in movies since forever. Do dogs and horses rip off their trainer’s arm and eat it, because they’re p!ssed that they didn’t get a treat because they performed badly? Whales are intelligent, true. But they’re still animals, just like horses, dogs and elephants, all of whom combined have about the IQ of Kamala or Crocket, who thus far haven’t ripped off anybody’s arms.

[Eleutheria5]

You don’t keep calling sperm whales Moby, even after what he did to Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod. Is that just because he was white? Huh?/;D

[Paal Gulli]

Being taught to react to certain sounds is A FAR CRY from “understanding.”

[Eleutheria5]

Actually, killer whales get the name “killer” on account of what they do to their whale cousins. See The Last Vikings, if you can find it. I read it. It was a book about the decline of the viking way of life, and it has an account of a “grampus” whale chasing after a much larger, but terrified, whale and taking big chunks out of him. But AI has no record of it, and I don’t recall the author’s name.

[Eleutheria5]

My old Boston Terrier Pit Bull used to study my facial expression and body language intently. He was looking for hints of what I was going to do, my moods. Long gone to the kennel in the sky. Dogs are social animals, and view their “master” as the alpha of their pack.

[Paal Gulli]

Kanzi the bonobo spontaneously made an abbreviated sentence from unrelated words, asking for fire and marshmallows. His keeper gave him a box of strike-anywhere matches and a bag of marshmallows. Then Kanzi proceeded to break sticks, lay a fire, remove a single matchstick from the box, close the box, strike the match, light the fire, fashion a stick for the purpose and roast a marshmallow over the fire.

In an outing in the woods in Georgia, Kanzi touched the symbols for "marshmallows" and "fire". Susan Savage-Rumbaugh said in an interview that, "Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick." The Telegraph published photographs of Kanzi putting together a fire for food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanzi#Anecdotes

I don't think there's any video of the original but there are videos on YouTube of the numerous recreations.

In the videos I've seen the marshmallow wasn't properly toasted, and I'm not sure if Kwanzi understood the goal (I note he didn't ask for graham crackers and hershey bars) or if it was just mimicry, but even if only that it still is extraordinary.

[Paal Gulli]

"Given that sound travels through water, perhaps the attacked vessels were playing music offensive to the orcas involved."

I can dig it. Even though they're mostly black, killer whales hate cRap too!

[Eleutheria5]

The Last of the Vikings by John Bojer!

[rlmorel]

All living creatures have some degree of “intelligence”, the question is, what “degree” is it for different animals, and how do you test it?

For example, on a relative size basis to the entire brain, the hippocampus (part of the brain responsible for spatial location, learning, and memory) of bird’s brains is three times larger proportionally than it is in humans. In tests, a chickadee which caches its food in various locations for later retrieval can remember with fidelity up to 6,000 separate locations where it has hidden seeds and other food.

And in the case of New Caledonian Crows, they can do complex problem solving and learning. For example, they could not only solve a sequential puzzle, they had a specific part of the task that involved snaring something inside a water-filled tube where the tool they had to retrieve it was too short to do so. The crow figured out that it could drop pebbles into the tube (causing the water level to rise, and floating the object with food up to the point they could snare it with the short tool (which was a wire that the bird bent itself into a hook shape)

Nobody would say birds are “smarter” than humans, but do you think you could remember with fidelity 6,000 different locations you usually put your car keys?

Point is, and it appears lost on some people, that there are various levels and forms of intelligence in the animal kingdom, and there are ways of measuring intelligence that highlight functions that only humans and some very specific animal species can access. How and what to measure can give important insights into why humans are the way they are.

Dogs are smart, and anyone who watches a Belgian Malinois in action would be hard pressed to deny that. But there are certain functions that even intelligent creatures such as dogs and horses cannot access that creatures like cetaceans and high primates can.

[Eleutheria5]

“killer whales hate cRap too!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYMkEMCHtJ4&list=RDgYMkEMCHtJ4&start_radio=1

Do Blue Whales racially profile Orcas.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

“Why are killer whales attacking boats?”

They were raised without fathers?

[Eleutheria5]

But they were breast fed.