Mad About Science: Orcas

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist
Sponsored by the Sandpoint Library

After reading Jodi Rawson’s article on “Tilikum” in the Feb. 2 issue of the Reader, I felt inspired to learn a bit more about everyone’s favorite ocean mammal.

But Brenden, dolphins are everyone’s favorite ocean mammal.

Wanna know a secret?

Bottlenose dolphins and orcinus orca belong to the same family of delphinidae (oceanic dolphins).

Orcas are everyone’s favorite ocean mammal twice over!

Orcas are the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family, with males ranging from 23 to 32 feet long and weighing anywhere from six to 10 tons. That thing weighs more than a Ford F-150. An orca can also swim almost 30 mph in open water, which is 30 m.p.h. faster than a Ford F-150 can drive in the same conditions.

To be fair, if you put the orca on a road, the truck would win by a landslide, but why would you want to put a whale on the road or a truck in the ocean?

Orcas have an incredible range, rivaling that of even humans (with some obvious restrictions). They’re found most often in the Arctic and Antarctic, but they cover an immense amount of distance while traveling: up to 100 miles a day, at least. That must take a lot of energy to move that much muscle that far every day.

Sure does, there’s a reason we call them killer whales (though “killer dolphins” would be more appropriate), and it’s not because they’re totally ripped. Nor is it because they attack humans, because they don’t unless you lock them up. If weird aliens one-ninth of your size locked you up, you’d probably try to attack them, too.

They are voracious eaters in the wild, highly evolved apex predators with only one creature above them on the food chain: humans.

Orca teeth are adapted to grip prey and shear flesh with ease. Their front teeth tilt outward to project a restrictive force on prey and ensure it doesn’t get away, while sharpened rear teeth can fillet a seal with shocking dexterity.

Their diet consists of anything smaller than them, but mainly fish, squids and other cephalopods and crustaceans. They like their sashimi fresh and writhing. Awesome.

Being part of the oceanic dolphin family, orcas are crazy smart. They have complex social structures that we don’t fully understand, but we’ve figured out that their pods (groups of whales) have a very unique trait: They are led by an alpha female. Almost exclusively.

This is pretty cool because females are almost always much smaller than males.

Even more awesome, we’ve discovered that different whales have different dialects and accents, likely influenced by the incredible amount of distance they cover while still interacting. Their calls can change pitch and tone, but still mean the same thing, similar to when we say “Get in the car!” but someone from Boston might say “Get in the cah!”

They also seem to understand humans and our machines to a certain degree. They’re able to identify when we are a threat to them and when we’re just passing by. Similar to bottlenose dolphins and porpoises, we’ve seen pods of orcas racing speedboats for fun.

I mean, they were underwater and swimming with the speedboat, they weren’t in speedboats, though that would be totally awesome.

Their ability to communicate doesn’t start and end with acoustics. Anyone that has ever seen a cetacean knows that whales enjoy jumping out of the water and making a spectacle. This is called breaching. Scientists still don’t completely understand why it’s done, but several hypotheses exist.

One thought is that it’s a form of showing off. Being able to fling your entire body out of the water with no land to push off from is like saying “Look how totally SHREDDED I am! #flex.” It takes a lot of energy and seems to happen most frequently in the presence of other cetaceans.

Another thought is that it could be a way for them to get air in rough seas. If the air near the top of the water is choked with spray and mist, it may be important to jump above the bulk of it to get a nice, deep breath. They are mammals, after all, and they need air.

Orcas also breach for food, unlike other cetaceans such as humpback whales. Seals and penguins may perch themselves on ice floes, thinking foolishly that they’re safe from the great shadow lurking beneath the waves, only for the beast to soar out of the water and grab them in one fell swoop.

Smaller orcas are capable of clearing twice their body length when leaping out of the water, if they so choose.

That would be like Yao Ming jumping 15 feet vertically.

Don’t believe me? Look it up, the pictures are astounding.

Their ability and intelligence while hunting is something of legend. Wolves ought to write this stuff down. Orca pods have been observed scattering and isolating smaller prey and unleashing an unrelenting chase that can last for hours. They communicate tactical formations and are even capable of using echolocation to calculate prey trajectories to create walls with their bodies to block off escaping prey. Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up. They corral dolphins with their bodies while one of them will pursue it for hours. They’re extremely fast and smart enough to adapt their plans on the fly. If something has been targeted and isolated by a pod, its chance of survival is very slim.

They’ve been seen playing with the bodies of their food, oftentimes while it’s still barely alive. Orcas are sadistic, man.

Sea pandas (definitely not their scientific name) are truly majestic creatures. They are testament to the raw power of nature. While they are truly a spectacle to behold, their potential can only be realized in open water. An oversized aquarium is no place to keep one of these incredible creatures, and it is no place to learn about them. They are powerful and wildly intelligent, and if you want to learn everything you can about them inside of a tank, you aren’t going to learn very much.

You would never see how they hunt, how they interact, how they stabilize the ecosystems around them.

How much would you learn about art from Van Gogh if you locked him up in a prison cell?

How much would you learn about football from Peyton Manning if you stuck him in a broom closet?

Brenden, you’re a damn dirty hippie!

Yes, yes, I may be with all of my ‘save the whales, save the trees’ I’m always spouting… But don’t forget, I enjoy seeing a Killer Whale rip apart a sea lion as much as the next guy.

I just want to see it in the wild, not in a glass prison.