Killer Whales (Orcas)

Alex Re

Hello, and welcome to the first ever episode of on wildlife with Alex Re. I'm your host, Alex Re. So every week we're going to be taking an in depth look at a new animal. And I'll talk about where they live, what they eat, their behaviors and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. I'm doing this podcast mainly to show you how awesome the world around us is, but to also raise awareness to some of the problems that these animals are facing because of humans. Today, we're headed to the ocean to talk about one of my favorite animals, the Orca, or more commonly known as the killer whale.

Alex Re

The first thing we should talk about is why the name killer whale is pretty deceiving. So killer whales got their name because ancient sailors first observed them hunting large whales. So they named them whale killers. And this was eventually misinterpreted over time, into what we now call them killer whales. And it's actually pretty funny because killer whales are not whales at all. They're actually members of the dolphin family. And their name might sound kind of scary and menacing. But an orca has never been observed to attack a human in the wild before, only in captivity. And later in the podcast, we're going to talk about why keeping these animals in captivity is extremely harmful. But for the rest of the podcast, I'm going to be referring to them by their scientific name, which is the Orca. orcas are found almost everywhere in the world, in every ocean, but they really like the colder water up in Antarctica. Personally, I would have chosen something near Bermuda, but to each their own. orcas can be identified by their black and white coloration, which actually gives them an advantage when they're hunting for food. And we're going to talk about what makes orcas such great predators later on in the podcast. They are the largest member of the dolphin family and males can get up to 26 feet long, and 12,000 pounds, which is half as long as a school bus and over three times heavier than the average car. And they can live to be up to 80 years old, that's old enough to justify being rude to your waiter. Workers are mammals, which means that they don't lay eggs, they give birth to live young, just like people were also mammals. And they're a lot more closely related to humans than they are to fish or sharks, even though they look a lot more like fish. We shared a common ancestor with dolphins around 95 million years ago. And some ways that we're able to see this is by looking at their bones. For example, workers have finger bones that are very similar to the ones that we have. And these structures we share with each other are called homologous structures. And they tell scientists a lot about the origins of different species and where they came from. orcas also have hip bones, which they don't use. And scientists think that this could be evidence that their ancestors used to have legs and live on land. These structures that used to have a function but don't anymore are called vestigial structures. And humans have them too. We have the appendix, which 1000s of years ago used to help us digest raw meat. But over time, when we learned how to cook, the appendix lost its function. Even though the appendix no longer does anything for us, it still remains there. This is similar to what happened with the orcas and their hip bones. They no longer need them, but they're still there. So because orcas are mammals, they don't have gills like fish do, they have to breathe through the air just like humans. They have this structure on their head called a blowhole, and when they emerge out of the water, they can then breathe some air and then go back down. They can spend about 15 minutes underwater before they have to come up for air. orcas and dolphins do this really, really weird thing because they need to keep breathing, even when they're asleep. So what they do is they shut down half their brain while the other half remains active. That's basically how I live my life right now, by the way, they don't have to stop moving to sleep, they can rest half their brain, while the other half allows them to keep swimming up to the surface for air. And they can switch between each half when the other half needs a rest. Think about how much time you'd be able to save in the morning. If you only needed to rest half your brain. You could shower and sleep at the same time. We're going to take a little break and when we come back I'm going to talk about why orcas are the most feared predator in the ocean.

Alex Re

Time for quick trivia question, which animal can lift up to 5000 times their own weight? A elephants B and C bald eagles or de hippopotami? The answer is B. Okay, so we're back, we're gonna start talking about why orcas are the most feared predator in the ocean. So orcas are carnivores, meaning they only eat meat. And you can tell that just by looking at their teeth, which are really pointy, and they can get up to four inches long. Just to put that into perspective, the tooth of a great white shark is only two and a half inches long. orcas really eat just about anything depending on where they live. They've been known to eat fish, sharks, seabirds, seals, and even sting rays. They're like your weird uncle on Thanksgiving. They are perfectly suited in almost every way to be the best hunter in the ocean. And they are the best. Scientists call them the apex predator in the ocean ecosystem. They are at the top of the food chain, and they have no natural predators. Remember how I was talking about their black and white coloration? Well, this is a form of camouflage so that their prey has a hard time seeing them. Workers are mostly white on their underside because they blend in with the light shining down on the ocean. If their prey was looking up, and an orca, their white coloration would make them harder to see. And they're black on their backs. Because if they're prayer looking down, they blend in with the darkness of the ocean depths. They also hunting groups called pods, and they're similar to wolves in that way. And these groups are really helpful for the orcas when they're hunting. They work as a team in order to catch their prey, and they use really interesting strategies in order to do it. The first strategy that I'm going to talk about is when orcas are hunting seals. So, when orcas are hunting seals, the seal will usually jump onto a floating piece of ice where the orcas can't reach them. They have a strategy to counter this and it's just mind blowing. All the orcas will form a horizontal line and start swimming towards the ice at the same time. at the last second, they will simultaneously dip down under the surface just enough to create a wave that knocks the seal off the piece of ice. The second strategy I'm going to talk about is when they're hunting sharks, which are a little bit more dangerous than seals. They've even been known to use this strategy against great white sharks. So what the orcas will do is they'll use their tails to karate chop the head of the shark, and then they'll flip it upside down in order to put them into a state of tonic immobility. And this thing called tonic immobility is something that happens to sharks when they're positioned in a certain way. And they're basically paralyzed. This makes them easy prey for the orcas because they can't bite back. So this third strategy that they use, explains the reason that orcas were first referred to as whale killers. And remember, orcas are not whales, they're dolphins. So what the orcas will do is they'll chase down a large whale for hours in order to tire it out, then they will position themselves on top of the blowhole of the whale in order to suffocate it. Remember that whales and dolphins both need their blowholes in order to breathe. After depriving these whales of oxygen. The orcas have an easy meal, pretty brutal. We're gonna take another short break. And when we get back, I'm going to talk about how smart orcas actually are.

Alex Re

If you want more information about orcas, or you just want to suggest a new animal for me to talk about, you can email on wildlife. dot podcast@gmail.com. And we're back. And we're going to start talking about how smart orcas actually are. And what you should know is they're really smart. Their brains weigh about 15 pounds, you could fit like 1200 Ticonderoga pencils in there. For comparison, human brains only weigh about three pounds. an animal's ability to problem solve is usually measured by how large their brain is compared to their body size. If their brain size is big compared to their body size, they're generally seen as more intelligent. Humans have the largest score for their brain size to body size ratio. And while apes are considered to be fairly intelligent, they have smaller brain size to body size ratio score. And orcas have a similar brain to body size ratio score that apes do. And they aren't just born knowing all these cool ways to hunt down their prey. They have to actually learn it from other organs that already know how to do it just like humans would. In order to survive in the wild, they have to be social. And in order to communicate with other orcas in their pod, they can send out a bunch of different signals to each other. Some researchers have found that pods have their own dialect That is specific to only their pod. orcas can also use sound for another reason navigation. This is a process called echo local location. So echolocation is when orcas will send out a high pitched sound to an object through a structure in their forehead called the melon. This structure focuses the sound better to the object that they're pointing at. And the sound wave shoots out and then bounces back towards them. And then they receive it in another structure in their jaw bone. This helps them find their way around the ocean. Let's take a listen to what orcas actually sound like.

Alex Re

And because they're so smart, and social, putting these animals in captivity is just a bad idea. They need to be able to swim with a lot of open space with other orcas from their pod. And they're just not doing that when they're in captivity, they can swim up to 40 miles in a single day. If somebody was speed walking, it would take them 11 hours without stopping to reach 40 miles. These are all huge stressors that can lead to behaviors that orcas would not have even had in the wild, like grinding their teeth against the enclosure wall until they hit a nerve or banging their heads against the walls. Remember when I said that in the wild, there has not been a single account of any Orca attacking a human? Well, this type of stress has caused around 100 incidents of orcas attacking their trainers. Luckily, since the airing of the documentary Blackfish this has been brought to the attention of a wider audience, and SeaWorld has even decided to end its Orca breeding program. Unfortunately, orcas are still susceptible human activities even in the wild. Much of the orcas food supplies depleting because of things like overfishing. Aside from overfishing, pollution in the ocean can be very harmful to them as well. A lot of chemicals that large companies dump into the oceans can be toxic to orcas and other marine species and can cause serious health problems. But there are a ton of things that we can do to help orcas. There are a lot of organizations that are already doing some amazing work that help all dolphins and whales that you can donate to and volunteer for. Some of them are even geared specifically towards orcas, just to name a few. There's the whale and dolphin conservation, Orca Conservancy, and wild Orca. I really hope that in 100 or 200 years from now, we're still able to see these awesome animals in the wild, and you should too, and we can help make that happen. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explore the world of the oceans top predator. You can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference @ www.on wildlife.org Join us next week to learn about our world's gentle giants, elephants and that's on wildlife.

Jess Avellino

You've been listening to on wildlife with Alex Re, brought to you every Wednesday.