Orcas, aka killer whales even though they’re members of the dolphin family, really are vicious. In fact, a new study reports that a group of scientists actually saw more than a dozen orcas attack and kill a 70-foot blue whale off the southwest coast of Australia, the first time that such an attack has been recorded.
The study was published last month in the journal Marine Mammal Science. It notes that scientists had known that orcas attacked and killed blue whales before, but they were always juvenile blue whales. (Blue whales are the largest creatures that ever lived, and can grow up to 110 feet long.)
Now, the study reports that a group of scientists in Project ORCA actually witnessed an orca attack on an adult blue whale in March of 2019 in Bremer Bay, an area rich in marine life.
They saw more than a dozen predatory orcas surround and attack an adult blue whale. The orcas were fast and agile. They destroyed the whale’s dorsal fin and kept surrounding and biting it; one even entered the whale’s mouth to eat its tongue.
The attack lasted more than an hour until the increasingly helpless whale died. Then another 50 or so orcas showed up to join in the feast.
Rebecca Wellard, the lead researcher for Project ORCA who witnessed the attack, told The New York Times, “The killer whales we researched off Bremer Bay are rewriting the textbook on what we thought we knew about the species.” Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/06/australia/orcas-hunt-kill-adult-blue-whale-intl-scli/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/science/orcas-blue-whales.html
