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Mar 2, 2024 · A solitary killer whale, or orca, has been filmed hunting and killing a great white shark in an "astonishing" attack off the coast of South Africa. Scientist...
- 2 min
- 2.6M
- BBC News
Jul 19, 2024 · Killer Shark vs Killer Whale (Full Episode) | Nat Geo Wild. 1K Likes. 63,756 Views. Jul 19 2024. The mystery of orcas attacking great white sharks for their livers leaves scientists...
- 44 min
- 62.9K
- Nat Geo WILD
- They get caught up in fads, including ramming boats. Orca whales ATTACK fishing boat and tear off rudder in another bizarre encounter. Watch on. Orcas are intelligent and intensely social animals that pick up behaviors from fellow orcas.
- They eat great white sharks. Killer whales eating white sharks in Mossel Bay, South Africa. Watch on. Some orcas specialize in prey like bluefin tuna, elephant seals or even blue whales—but others focus on hunting sharks.
- They surge onto the shore to hunt. Killer whales gather to kill sea lions off the coast of Argentina. Watch on. Orcas develop specialized tactics for hunting their local prey.
- They have reunions. Orcas Ceremony: J Pod at Granny's Cove, San Juan Island. Watch on. When they’re not hunting, orcas can engage in other behaviors that reflect their complex social structures.
- Overview
- Tasty livers
- See 13 killer photos of killer whales
- Elusive killers
Though the great white is considered the top marine predator, orcas may actually rule the oceans, new observations suggest.
2:58
Biologists in South Africa investigate the remains of great white sharks killed by orcas, a behavior rarely witnessed firsthand.
When Alisa Schulman-Janiger heard great white shark carcasses had washed up on South African beaches without their livers a few years ago, she was shocked.
“I was thinking, Déjà vu, here we go again,” says the biologist, a research associate at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
In October 1997, tourists in a whale-watching boat off the Farallon Islands, near San Francisco, witnessed two killer whales attack a great white shark and consume its liver.
Alison Kock, a marine biologist at the Cape Research Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, had already been studying two orcas that were attacking and eating livers of broadnose sevengill sharks, a species that lives in the kelp forests of False Bay.
They were named Port and Starboard, since their dorsal fins flopped over—one to the left and one to the right.
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An orca helps herd a school of herring in the deep waters of the Andfjorden in Norway. ( See more of orcas .)
An orca helps herd a school of herring in the deep waters of the Andfjorden in Norway. (See more of orcas.)
Photograph by Paul Nicklen, Nat Geo Image Collection
When the white shark carcasses washed ashore in 2017, Kock and colleagues suspected the orca duo was to blame. They performed CSI-style necropsies on the bodies, which were intact, save for an impressively neat tear between the two pectoral fins. Apparently the orcas knew exactly where the liver was located, and sucked the organ out of the open wound. (Watch a video of killer whales attacking a blue whale.)
The orca population off South Africa is less well studied than the one off California, in part because humans rarely encounter them, according to Simon Elwen, a whale and dolphin biologist at South Africa's University of Pretoria.
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Watch an Orca Knock Stingray Out Cold With its Tail—for ‘Play’
Rare video of orcas filmed in Mexico shows them toying with a stingray that eventually died, but was not eaten.
“They tend to be out on the continental shelf or deeper waters,” he says. “There’s nobody doing targeted photographic or tagging studies, so we don’t know much about individual killer whales,” he says in the show. (Read about a mysterious new orca species that was recently identified.)
As of 2019, Port and Starboard have moved on to preying on another shark species, the bronze whaler.
- 3 min
- Emma Rigney
The Pacific Ocean is home to both great white sharks and killer whales. While the two species are not often found in the same areas, there have been instances of killer whales attacking great white sharks in the open ocean.
- Killer whales are known to be intelligent and highly social animals that hunt in groups. They have been observed attacking and killing great white...
- Killer whales are larger than great white sharks, with males reaching up to 32 feet in length and weighing up to 22,000 pounds, while female great...
- Killer whales and great white sharks are not natural enemies, but they do compete for similar prey, such as seals and sea lions. Killer whales are...
- Great white sharks have been observed avoiding areas where killer whales are present, suggesting that they may perceive them as a threat. However,...
- Killer whales hunt in groups and use a variety of tactics, including herding and chasing prey, as well as using their powerful tails to stun fish a...
- Killer whales and great white sharks occupy different niches in the ecosystem and do not directly compete for resources. However, they both play im...
Mar 4, 2024 · The team observed an adult orca named “Starboard” singlehandedly subdue and kill a great white shark, and then eat its liver — all in the space of about two minutes. Scientists say this observation is significant because orcas typically hunt in groups.
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Oct 6, 2022 · Share article. Scientists believe they have captured the first direct evidence of orca whales hunting and killing white sharks, with new drone and aerial footage demonstrating what had previously only been formally described by just three studies.
