Orcas Teaching Each Other To Attack Boats, They Are At War
Live Science reports that orcas have sank a mid-sized sailing yacht named the Grazie Mama off the coast of southwestern Europe. This most recent attack occurred on Halloween, and marks the fourth time orcas have taken down a boat in this particular region in just two years.
More famously known as killer whales, it’s clear that these apex predators are showing their namesake, as their violent and calculated behavior has been documented with an alarming frequency over the past several years.
These Intelligent Creatures Are Teaching Eachother New Behaviors
Marine biologists the world over will tell you that orcas are highly intelligent creatures who boast brains that are highly developed when it comes to memory and emotion. Orcas are also highly social creatures, who are capable of not only learning new skills, but training other whales in their pod to adopt these behaviors.
There’s A Female Ringleader Behind These Attacks
A prime example of orcas passing on learned behaviors can be found near the Strait of Gibraltar, which is located between Spain and Morocco. In 2020, researchers have noticed an increase in orca attacks on boats, and think that a female orca named White Gladis may be responsible for teaching her pod to rip the rudders off of yachts in a playful, yet menacing manner.
The prevailing theory is that White Gladis was traumatized by a past boat collision, and in her subsequent quest for revenge has taught other orcas in her region to be weary of approaching ships.
This Behavior Is Central To One Location
As boat attacks become more efficient with each passing incident, it’s clear that orcas are adapting and learning how to maximize damage every time they encounter a passenger ship.
It’s worth noting, however, that not all learned behaviors are created equal. Regionally speaking, orcas are mostly sinking ships in a very specific area near the coast of Spain and Portugal. While this is clearly a learned behavior, there are other acts of violence they exhibit worldwide that may have gone unnoticed for quite some time.
Orca’s Killer Instincts Can Be Vicious
One universal example of orcas exhibiting violent behavior is the way they kill sharks to consume their livers. Attention was drawn to this phenomenon when two male orcas named Port and Starboard were documented feasting on their victim over the past several years. Orcas have also been known to eat the tongues right out of the mouths of live whales.
Should We Be Worried?
Though there’s no question that we have better technology to monitor and document the behavior of orcas, experts have reason to believe that this particular set of learned behaviors haven’t been learned recently, but are rather long-standing. In other words, orcas that exhibit certain unique learned behaviors, like ramming boats for fun, are localized within a particular region.
But attacking other apex predators and feasting on their entrails has been witnessed by marine biologists all over the world, which suggests that these behaviors were learned over thousands of years of evolution, and we’re just now witnessing it because we’re better at observing these kinds of incidents.
Orcas are fascinating, intelligent, and violent creatures who are absolutely capable of adaptive reasoning and working new skill sets into their arsenal of attacks. While the increase in boat attacks is clearly a recently learned skill set, it goes without question that these big-brained apex predators can get belligerent when a perceived threat approaches. But on the same token, if they weren’t taught to attack boats by another orca in their pod, they’d probably pay no mind to an approaching vessel if they didn’t have reason to believe that their lives were in danger.
