Killer Whales Are Hardcore, Science Confirms

🍽🐋 For the first time in history, orcas were recorded killing and eating the world’s largest mammal, the blue whale. There were prior reports of killer whales chasing blue whales; however, no attacks – or details of how the animals operate – have been officially documented until now.

(WARNING: Some of the following details are fairly graphic. Nature can be gnarly.)

• One big detail revealed by the recently published paper: killer whales will hunt healthy adult blue whales, not just calves. Blue whale adults are usually between 70-80 feet long and can weigh up to 300,000 pounds.
• Another find to come from the paper: orcas are strong independent females that don’t need no man. It was previously thought that in order to take down a blue whale, male orcas had to actively participate – but at least two of the three documented attacks were female-led.
• The paper was also the first to document orcas’ finishing moves. In the first attack, three female killer whales lined up side-by-side to ram the blue whale underwater while two others attacked its head. Another one swam inside its mouth and started eating its tongue, which is nutritionally dense (this happened in at least one other attack, too).

😬 The bottom line: While the paper is fascinating and expands our knowledge of orcas, three attacks is still a small sample size. And as Dr. Peter Richardson, head of ocean recovery at the Marine Conservation Society UK, told The Guardian: “...This behaviour has perhaps been going on for centuries out in the open ocean where it’s difficult to study.”

+Go deeper:

• Some scientists say killer whales feed on mammals as the opportunity presents itself, and we could be witnessing a return to centuries-past behavior as blue whale populations recover from whaling. There’s actually a sailor’s legend about “Old Tom”, an orca ​​who spent almost four decades in the early 1900s helping fishermen catch baleen whales off the coast of Australia.
• There were estimated to have been 300,000 blue whales before whaling. Now there may be 15,000 to 20,000, with numbers believed to be increasing.

+Captured on video: Watch the orcas hunt.

+Go even deeper: Learn more about killer whales, the apex marine predator.