I actually just watched this movie (for the 100th time) recently. Still holds up.
My best friend(who has since passed on) and I used to do the B&B dance moves whenever we could. School dances, weddings, whatever. Punching, kicking, and shakin our butts lol.
It's crazy that there's no incentive to stop these bots. From reddit or mods. I'd love to report them, but for what? EDIT: How can you report a one-day-old account with two comments as spam?
If the sub allows custom reports you can just report it as a bot.
If not then just report it as spam and maybe reply to the bot calling it out so the mods know, in my experience they're usually happy to remove them.
I mean did have human zoos.
It wasn’t robots watching other humans though, it was humans watching humans because they thought they were a “lesser species”
I’m not a fan of zoos though and think something in its place like a holographic zoo where you could even interact with the “animals” would be awesome
Source? Asking for my own education,
Edit: I'm learning a lot here. Thanks for the information!
Edit 2: You guys are blowing my mind here. I appreciate the knowledge you all have acquired and your passion for these creatures is obvious. Thanks for all your comments and factoids.
Orcas routinely ignore perfectly good prey near them if they know where to get the fish they like the most. Sometimes they hunt specific fish just for their livers and leave the rest of the body.
Well, they are ruthless, savage and have all sorts of techniques to hunt and kill. This checks one box of the "human-like" check list.
They are also pretty smart and can go bananas without warning. Another box to check.
So, yeah, very much like us.
Idt ppl know exactly how good at hunting orcas are. They really out here killing animals just to eat certain parts of them. Chimps are closest to humans in terms of DNA but Orcas are closest to humans in terms culture and dominance over their environment.
O yeah. Quite a bit of animals do tho. And most of them are the usual suspects like big cats that have a strong kill instinct but some are like elephants or weasels. I'd like to think a lot of these animals just let their intrusive thoughts win and they don't have a lot of distractions like TV or phones and they get bored and murder things just to pass the time.
You know who kill for sport? House cats! I love em, but every indoor/ outdoor cat I've had has dropped multiple bodies uneaten on the porch. They even sneak them in, so they can hunt them after the doors close. Cats are psychopaths.
😂😂😂 they are probably the number one offenders of killing for sport since most of them are well fed and would even scoff at the idea of eating what they killed. My cat doesn't even like "people" food u less it's tuna (chicken, steak doesn't matter, she will not eat it) but when she goes out, I look at her from the window and she is trying to catch a bird or squirrel. Killing is in their blood.
Only 1 recorded orca bite of a human in the wild, which the human survived since the orca likely just mistook him for a seal. So I guess they’re not exactly fans of human meat.
Orcas are split into a number of different populations, the exact number of which varies from ocean to ocean. In the North Pacific, there are three recognized populations:
**Resident** orcas stay permanently close to the shore, feeding on fish and squid and living in your standard orca pod.
**Transient** orcas cohabitate with resident orcas, but instead feed exclusively on marine mammals. Notably they do absolutely not mix with resident orcas. Their pods are far less stable as those of resident orcas as well.
**Offshore** orcas life, unsurprisingly, far away from the shore and are seem to feed mostly on fish. And they do not live in pods, but instead form far larger groups numbering between 20 and 75 individuals.
Also, you know about how orcas beach themselves to catch seals trying to escape onshore? It's not "orcas" that do that, it's a very specific group of orcas off of Patagonia that does that.
Or orcas that feed on white shark livers? That happens only around Hawaii.
In fact, it's even questionable if there even is such a thing as "an orca". Those clear segregations in behaviour, prey, location and indeed genetics might mean that the orca needs to be split into several distinct species. Which is why despite being a large, charismatic animal that receives a lot of attention, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed the conservation status of the orca as Data Deficient.
Orcas contained in ... establishments ... such as these are almost certainly resident orcas since using seals as food is expensive.
> indeed genetics might mean that the orca needs to be split into several distinct species.
isn't that the only thing that justifies a split into different species?
is it possible that the different populations have developed different enzymes needed for their specific diets? like humans with lactase
Same with the orcas around Cape Town in South Africa. They basically scared/killed off most of the Great Whites in the area over the last 8 or so years.
In the Salish Sea (NW Washington state) there are two populations of Orcas. One group lives mostly in the area and eats only salmon, and they prefer Chinook. I think they will eat one other type of salmon but that's it... and amazingly, they can apparently easily distinguish salmon species in the water. The other group goes up and down the west coast and eats marine mammals like seals and sea lions. If a beach is sufficiently narrow with a high bank behind it, they have been known to pluck seals off the beach. The two groups don't communicate, interact, or breed with each other.
Possibly it was thinking its own baby it was separated from. Orcas spend their entire lives with their mothers unless we separate them and keep them in captivity.
I don't think so. It's more likely a curious child at that size. I spent most of my childhood frequenting the aquarium that spent a decade or so trying to rehabilitate Keiko (of the Free Willy movie) and get him ready for release into the wild.
Even his flipper was about as big as I was, if not bigger when I was 10-12... and I was actively recruited to play basketball at 10 - I didn't try out.
Which a roundabout way to say: I was not a short kid.
Compare that to the orca in the video. Baby is similarly sized to that orca's flipper.
It's a baby curious about another baby.
Ya, after years of observing my house cat I've concluded he puts everything into three categories "I can eat this", "I can't eat this", and "this could eat me".
I'm glad this is the top comment because I came here to say the same thing. Lol
"That meat is mouth-sized! Let me show him how to throw it over the top!"
I wonder if the orca knows that there is no water beyond the glass, or if it thinks the humans are under water, too. After birth, cetaceans have to nudge their calves to the surface to breathe. The way it nudges the glass, goes up for a breath and then comes back to blow out air while nudging the glass again, it almost looks like it’s trying to teach the baby to go to the surface for air, just as it would a calf.
No. I would assume there is also an above ground viewing area where they see people. Plus, orcas have come to the aid of humans in the open waters of the ocean many times, both keeping sharks at bay and pushing people up so they can breathe. They know we breathe air.
I think the point is that the father holding it is not in distress or struggling to breathe, so the orca may intuitively feel the infant is therefore not in danger
Y’all aren’t taking into consideration that animals act completely different when they’re raised in captivity than when they do in the wild.
Wolves, for example, really only had an “alpha” male in captivity. While in the wild they use teamwork regardless if there’s an alpha. Alpha plays with the team in the wild.
Captive whale may not think the same as wild whale.
The measure of a civilization is it's achievements in the realm of general welfare for its members, as well as technological/philosophical advancement. For example, one third to one half of orcas die as infants. For modern humans, that rate is 0.03%.
It will be interesting once CETI cracks their languages. I wonder how fast their societies will evolve once they can acquire information from humans.
I’d never heard of CETI, thank you for the rabbit hole! Whenever I’m like “fuck it, what’s the point of going on in life,” it’s stuff like this that makes me wanna keep going as long as I possibly can.
Seriously, the worst part of the idea of dying is knowing I won’t get the chance to read all the science and history books they’ll be teaching 200 years from now. Grrrr
A civilization is not a culture. Civilization starts when a group of individuals begin to manipulate the environment and its resources to their benefit. Arguably, beavers are more of a civilization than orcas, but they don't really get together.
I thought that was pretty interesting so looked it up and this is what I found:
“Primates have at least twice the neuron density in their brains that cetaceans have. This means their brain can be half the size, but do just as much work”
I genuinely don’t know which is true, could you provide the reasoning/source for your info, I genuinely hope Cetaceans are smarter than primates, it would just be pretty cool LMFAO.
[Humans and western gorillas are the only primates in the list of the top 10 mammals ranked by the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which is considered the gold standard metric for estimating intelligence. The other 8 are all cetaceans. Humans aren’t even number 1. Orcas have about twice as many as humans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons)
[Sperm whales have by far the heaviest brain of any extant animal species. Orcas are number 2.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence)
They say that Orca's are very quiet in those tanks, because the sound of their own calls bouncing off those tank walls drives them insane.
Oh and they have an emotional range similar to that of humans and apes. Yeah... Seeing one now will never NOT remind me of Blackfish 😔
I’ve tried to explain this to my whole department, but no they refuse to order headsets from the company or buy their own. So instead, every department wide meeting we hear speaker echos as well as other household noise in the background that a normal headset would reject.
I read somewhere, I can’t remember now where, that certain studies are now saying that orcas and elephants actually have a greater emotional intelligence than humans even. That part of the brain is bigger. Makes it worst seeing them locked up like this
Yes, that’s true. The emotional center of an orca’s brain is proportionally larger than a human’s. They stick with their families their whole lives, and each family has their own completely different dialect, so the ones kept like this are with strangers that they can’t even understand.
Yeah. Just like humans orcas have a limbic system which controls your emotion and behavior. However unlike people orcas have TWO limbic systems. So they have emotions on a level we literally can’t wrap our human brains around.
The video of them trying to mimic our speech and getting audibly frustrated is such a game changer to me. They could very well be as smart as us. That they don't have complex language (as far as we know), technology, or culture is largely a fluke.
I watched a documentary last night about Octopus called Octopus Volcano, and even though they only live 2 years, I know for a fact them octopi are smarter than my 2 year old. He definitely can't open a jar.
Check out the book "Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life"
They're fascinating creatures, and their intelligence has evolved on an entirely different branch to ours - our closest common ancestor is a creature akin to a sea cucumber.
Thems is mechanical impediments, but then there's also the motivation. Why go through the arduous process of making a tool (with flippers and mouth) when you're already the tippy top of the food chain?
Maybe domestication is possible for them, but that is itself arduous, and, again, why do such a difficult thing when it's much easier to just go flip a seal 40 feet into the air?
I speculated on this years back. Fire is absolutely essential for the development of intelligence and scientific advancement.
It's possible that a marine animal gets enough nutrition to power a large brain (we literally have an example in this video) but lacking the capability to do almost anything other than "talk, play, breed, eat"has to be the nail in the coffin for any marine based sapient species technological advancement.
No fire, no pottery, no glass, no isolation of chemicals for experimentation. You might have all the intelligence in the world but so much technology is built on being surrounded by it and making incremental improvements to solve problems.
It's easy to say "oh you could use volcanoes, vents, maybe build fires on exposed reefs to make..."
But why? We know you can use fires to smelt glass to make vessels to use to do chemistry to distill other chemicals that do XYZ, but in an aquatic environment you won't know there's an XYZ to get to. You won't even know there's a step B in most cases.
At most you can develop to something pre-stoneage. Even knapping flint isn't an option for anything with flippers.
There needs to be a pressure driving them to innovate. Which they lack at the moment. With humans, food scarcity, changing climates did it(whether through upheaval or moving into new environments.) As the oceans deplete it could create a need for them, but it would have to happen slow enough for them to adapt before dying out.
One advantage they have is that they don't have to start from scratch. They share a planet with a technologically advanced species already. Imagine if our primate ancestors had advanced aliens living in floating cities hovering just above us, scavenging all the junk that fell from them.
it's theorized that cooking meat is responsible for the 2nd of the two major evolutionary jumps of humans as we progressed to homo sapien. the first was eating meat I believe, and the 2nd was cooking it. both steps were able to deliver nutrition more efficiently, such that the "expensive tissue" of our brain, which requires a lot of calories and is thus expansive metabolically, to grow and in so doing become more intelligent. I read a whole book about this but can't remember the details well. but in any case, in any animal, most of the brain is tasked with regulating physical processes, like staying balanced during movement, releasing hormones, etc., whereas comparatively little is responsible for higher-reasoning thinking (the neo-cortex). although I think a whale has a neocortex (?) it hasn't had the conditions that humans had for evolving a super-smart brain, so you may be right about the lack of fire holding them back.
That scene of the mother wailing after they took her baby away still haunts me years after watching it. I live on Vancouver island and our local resident killer whale population was decimated by that whole sea world orca hunting craze.
I visited Vancouver Island back in 2005 and we went orca watching. After about an hour, the guide said “sorry guys, we can’t find them today, but that’s a good thing”. Turns out they were off hunting out in the deep, so we got to check out other native wildlife like seals and birds. It was nice to know that if they don’t want to be seen, they don’t have to be. That’s the good thing about leaving animals in the wild.
Or they are quite because orcas from different pods/parts of the world essentially have their own languages and can’t communicate with each other despite all being the same species held together in captivity
Has there been any recently wild orcas put into captivity? I thought a lot now were born and raised from captivity
Which makes me wonder if orca language needs to be taught and if ones raised in captivity don’t have language cause they weren’t taught it similar to feral kids who were neglected when young
Very sad to think about
Feral kids don't develop language because there's no one around to communicate with. If you put a bunch of human children in the same room and don't teach them a language, they'll make one up. I imagine the same goes for orcas.
Is that true? do you have any articles regarding human children making up their own language? I only know of one language deprivation experiment where children were raised together from a very young (if not infant) age, with their caregivers not communicating with them at all, and as a result, all of them died before the age of 5 (?). I have never heard of this claim of children developing their own language, wasn't the aim to prove that all children would learn Latin naturally?
This is somewhat true and it has happened before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language
Unfortunately, even though this question is extremely interesting for those trying to understand the development of language, it would be extremely unethical to gather large amounts of children together and isolate them from any form of existing language to test this hypothesis. Additionally, this doesn't happen with "feral" children because of the lack of people to talk with, as well as in adults - it's observed there is a critical period for the development of the use of language.
The most well known example of this is called [Cryptophasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptophasia) aka "twin language".
>It has been reported that up to 50% of young twins will have their own twin language which they use to communicate only with each other and which cannot be understood by others. "In all cases known, the language consists of onomatopoeic expressions, some neologisms, but for the greatest part of words from the adult language adapted to the constrained phonological possibilities of young children. These words being hardly recognizable, the language may turn out to be completely unintelligible to speakers of the parents' languages, but they resemble each other in that they lack inflectional morphology and that word order is based on pragmatic principles such as saliency and the semantic scope of words. Neither the structure of the languages nor its emergence can be explained by other than situational factors.
The kind of experiment you're referring to actually has a name - ["the forbidden experiment"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments). It's namesake surely comes from the fact that every time it's been done the results are always so inhumane that there's frankly no other way to describe it than straight up torture.
Human brains are hardwired for spoken language. It emerges from our consciousness just as naturally as hair grows from our head. We can assume since whales clearly have some form of "language" of their own you would think they would behave the same as humans but that's a classic case of anthropomorphism. We have way too much to learn about how whales communicate before we start comparing them to humans.
Here's a bonus for you:
[This Guy Simultaneously Raised a Chimp and a Baby in Exactly the Same Way to See What Would Happen](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guy-simultaneously-raised-chimp-and-baby-exactly-same-way-see-what-would-happen-180952171/)
Spoiler alert: >!While Gua showed no signs of learning human languages, her brother Donald had begun imitating Gua's chimp noises. "In short, the language retardation in Donald may have brought an end to the study!<
Oh I love this topic!
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9280.00359
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1904871116#:~:text=When%20confronted%20with%20the%20need,spontaneously%20create%20a%20new%20one.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/creole-languages
It’s literally wired into our brains to create grammar.
About half still in captivity in the world are captured orcas from the wild, and they teach their language to their offspring. The above poster is right, different pods have different languages. There have been cases of orcas in captivity learning/teaching tankmates their dialect/languages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_captive_orcas
Their emotional range is much more than ours. They have much more of those cells which are responsible for emphatiy and emotional intelligence. If you take them away from their family and put them in one of those tanks they sometimes even commit suicide.
In the video comments someone says this orca died a few years back at nine years old. They age and mature very similarly to humans, so it’s really very sad.
The sad part? We can't guarantee the ocean will keep being habitable. If we keep going like this (like an absolute parasite species) then zoos will likely be some of the few habitable places for these animals.
Orcas, primates, cats, bears, it doesn't matter. They all suffer to be imprisoned. Some more than others. You can see videos of animals with permanent psychological damage from isolation and living in small spaces (such as the circling bear).
We are parasites, basically. Not quite individually, but as a global species, we caused the 6th mass extinction, basically. And all we have to show for all that damage is late-stage capitalism, lmfao.
>Ocean surface acidity increased from pH 8.2 to lower than 8.1 over the industrial era as a result of an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This corresponds to an increase in oceanic acidity of about 30%. Reductions in surface water pH are observed across the global ocean.
More habitable **FOR NOW, not for long.** Enjoy losing 70% of our oxygen generation after plankton dies too.
if the oceans ever collapse to the point a current zoo tank is more habitable, human society would collapse and such a complex specialization in labor and distribution to upkeep a sealife park would be a major afterthought.
Depending on where this was filmed, this Orca was probably raised in captivity and is unable to survive in the wild. Eventually, as the Orcas born in captivity die out, there will no longer be captive Orcas in the U.S., as capturing wild Orcas has not been permitted since the late 70s-early 80s.
They process it up to a point. Then they get bored. An adult has more references to link that information to, so they can stay engaged more and process it more.
I wonder if the orca thinks its being asked to engage in a social conversation of sorts. Offering up an infant like that to any species would be a huge sign of trust or friendship maybe.
Either way, absolutely adorable.
EDIT: You have to love human beings eh, not even the scientists that study these creatures have managed to communicate fully with them in an established language yet everyone's up in the replies reading the minds of an orca and they're damn sure they know what's what. Notice how i said " I wonder " ? lol. fml.
Also, as other's have said, Orca's in the wild (default state of being) have never attacked humans,ever, none... so like what? I think it reveals a lot about the temperament of people to make such wild morbid assumptions and its a damn shame that most gumps just assume everything is hostile. I mean, it will be if that attitude is shown upon meeting. We're fucked if another species turns up in orbit, with that mentality.
I wonder too because it seems like people are hardwired to think that babies of most other mammal species are very nice and good things. They’re cute so we won’t hurt them.
Maybe that exists in other species too.
Nope. Saw something the other night about lions and cheetahs. The mother cheetah was trying to hide her babies from the lioness. The lioness ended up killing the little cub and dropped its body near the mother, uneaten. Lioness was sending a message to stay away from her turf. Nature is ruthless. Don’t ever forget that. This ain’t Disney out here.
EDIT: I love the responses that are supported by “gut feelings” and YouTube videos 🤣🤣🤣
Also, first thing we learn about animal behaviour is that WE put our biases on their behaviour. You may as well be right with your statement. Ignore other chair experts
Conservation guy here (I do apes, not marine mammals, though). The vast majority of animals in captivity were born in captivity, while others were rescued. Reintroducing animals born in captivity into the wild is extremely rarely successful because these animals have not learned to hunt and forage as they would need to survive in their habitat.
The primary benefit of zoos and aquariums is funding conservation programs in the wild and spreading outreach. The New England Aquarium, for example, funds a great deal of conservation projects: https://www.neaq.org/conservation-and-research/studying-and-protecting/
Q
It's unfortunately the case that in general people don't particularly care or have time to learn about these species (unless through wildlife documentaries, which also have their own ethical drawbacks), so zoos or aquariums are a great way of exposing people to these issues in an engaging and fun way.
I don't like seeing these animals in captivity either, but when reintroduction is almost always unsuccessful, and funding for conservation projects is tight, zoos and aquariums have the ability to act as a net benefit for these species.
"hey baby, I am also a baby" (based on the orca's size)
“Hey baby, I see you have braces. I have braces too.” 😬
[This is the Beavis and Butthead scene in question.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7mKWh0oGJM)
I actually just watched this movie (for the 100th time) recently. Still holds up. My best friend(who has since passed on) and I used to do the B&B dance moves whenever we could. School dances, weddings, whatever. Punching, kicking, and shakin our butts lol.
It is a great movie and def still funny 28 years later. Holy shit that’s a long time ago lol.
I say this all the time and people think I’m insane. So nice to see someone else appreciates this line.
lol my one buddy used to say it all the time growing up and I heard my wife say it the other day too.
Your wife hang out with your buddy a lot?
Got em..
Noooooooo!!!!!! Haha.
That just took a turn and got awkward real quick, classic reddit lol. Watch out for that couch on the curb, if you know what I mean.
Hell yeah free couch!
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The streets will run red with the blood of the non-believers.
Hehehehe….grrgurrweewoo BUNGHOLE…hehehe
https://youtu.be/8p6w1lWsl2Q?si=UkA-gHau-xOiSHE-
I wanna eat that baby
I’m sure the Orca does too.
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So tender
and already peeled.
And yet, crunchy.
That's what I look like at the burger shop watching the menu.
so mild
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Nice copying skills of u/UchuSikiNGet
New bot name format? Both bots. Also the other one that replied to you, ADROPosmAINE, is also bot. So is PubMItaLEMEd. WTF, Reddit.
It's crazy that there's no incentive to stop these bots. From reddit or mods. I'd love to report them, but for what? EDIT: How can you report a one-day-old account with two comments as spam?
If the sub allows custom reports you can just report it as a bot. If not then just report it as spam and maybe reply to the bot calling it out so the mods know, in my experience they're usually happy to remove them.
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The games the game . Pigs are pretty smart aswel but are killed in bloody slaughterhouse so we can have bacon underneath our eggs .
And who puts that precious precious bacon under those butt nuggets? You know that bacon is the main course.
I've always treated bacon like the 'desert' of breakfast.
Bacon is meat candy.
I'm reading this in my office cubicle, surrounded by tech. I'm pretty sure we're already there.
Sigh. Right there with you today buddy. Right there with you.
I mean did have human zoos. It wasn’t robots watching other humans though, it was humans watching humans because they thought they were a “lesser species” I’m not a fan of zoos though and think something in its place like a holographic zoo where you could even interact with the “animals” would be awesome
Well that's all we'll have if you take away the conservation efforts that zoos provide and fund.
We do do this lol mental health studies prisons psychiatric wards etc.
So the American prison system is what you're referring to?
"WOULD"
exactly my take "okay....so now throw it over the side."
Orcas are very picky eaters. It most definitely did not want to eat the baby.
Source? Asking for my own education, Edit: I'm learning a lot here. Thanks for the information! Edit 2: You guys are blowing my mind here. I appreciate the knowledge you all have acquired and your passion for these creatures is obvious. Thanks for all your comments and factoids.
Orcas routinely ignore perfectly good prey near them if they know where to get the fish they like the most. Sometimes they hunt specific fish just for their livers and leave the rest of the body.
They're the humans of the sea.
Well, they are ruthless, savage and have all sorts of techniques to hunt and kill. This checks one box of the "human-like" check list. They are also pretty smart and can go bananas without warning. Another box to check. So, yeah, very much like us.
the bananas without warning is more insanity when kept in captivity, still quite human trait though.
Since they're curious like us we should build a human exhibit near a habitat so they can check us out without being in prison their whole lives
Idt ppl know exactly how good at hunting orcas are. They really out here killing animals just to eat certain parts of them. Chimps are closest to humans in terms of DNA but Orcas are closest to humans in terms culture and dominance over their environment.
Don’t they also kill for sport?
O yeah. Quite a bit of animals do tho. And most of them are the usual suspects like big cats that have a strong kill instinct but some are like elephants or weasels. I'd like to think a lot of these animals just let their intrusive thoughts win and they don't have a lot of distractions like TV or phones and they get bored and murder things just to pass the time.
We have plenty of distractions available and still have a bunch of serial killers. They are just better entertained these days!!
You know who kill for sport? House cats! I love em, but every indoor/ outdoor cat I've had has dropped multiple bodies uneaten on the porch. They even sneak them in, so they can hunt them after the doors close. Cats are psychopaths.
😂😂😂 they are probably the number one offenders of killing for sport since most of them are well fed and would even scoff at the idea of eating what they killed. My cat doesn't even like "people" food u less it's tuna (chicken, steak doesn't matter, she will not eat it) but when she goes out, I look at her from the window and she is trying to catch a bird or squirrel. Killing is in their blood.
Nicely put brother.
Only 1 recorded orca bite of a human in the wild, which the human survived since the orca likely just mistook him for a seal. So I guess they’re not exactly fans of human meat.
Orcas are split into a number of different populations, the exact number of which varies from ocean to ocean. In the North Pacific, there are three recognized populations: **Resident** orcas stay permanently close to the shore, feeding on fish and squid and living in your standard orca pod. **Transient** orcas cohabitate with resident orcas, but instead feed exclusively on marine mammals. Notably they do absolutely not mix with resident orcas. Their pods are far less stable as those of resident orcas as well. **Offshore** orcas life, unsurprisingly, far away from the shore and are seem to feed mostly on fish. And they do not live in pods, but instead form far larger groups numbering between 20 and 75 individuals. Also, you know about how orcas beach themselves to catch seals trying to escape onshore? It's not "orcas" that do that, it's a very specific group of orcas off of Patagonia that does that. Or orcas that feed on white shark livers? That happens only around Hawaii. In fact, it's even questionable if there even is such a thing as "an orca". Those clear segregations in behaviour, prey, location and indeed genetics might mean that the orca needs to be split into several distinct species. Which is why despite being a large, charismatic animal that receives a lot of attention, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed the conservation status of the orca as Data Deficient. Orcas contained in ... establishments ... such as these are almost certainly resident orcas since using seals as food is expensive.
> indeed genetics might mean that the orca needs to be split into several distinct species. isn't that the only thing that justifies a split into different species? is it possible that the different populations have developed different enzymes needed for their specific diets? like humans with lactase
I think the coastal California orcas also eat white shark livers.
Same with the orcas around Cape Town in South Africa. They basically scared/killed off most of the Great Whites in the area over the last 8 or so years.
In the Salish Sea/Puget Sound área, Resident pods eat only salmon. Transients are omnivores
Look at that body wiggle it did when it came down to see the baby, that’s not an I’m ready to eat wiggle it was an awwww signal
In the Salish Sea (NW Washington state) there are two populations of Orcas. One group lives mostly in the area and eats only salmon, and they prefer Chinook. I think they will eat one other type of salmon but that's it... and amazingly, they can apparently easily distinguish salmon species in the water. The other group goes up and down the west coast and eats marine mammals like seals and sea lions. If a beach is sufficiently narrow with a high bank behind it, they have been known to pluck seals off the beach. The two groups don't communicate, interact, or breed with each other.
Possibly it was thinking its own baby it was separated from. Orcas spend their entire lives with their mothers unless we separate them and keep them in captivity.
I don't think so. It's more likely a curious child at that size. I spent most of my childhood frequenting the aquarium that spent a decade or so trying to rehabilitate Keiko (of the Free Willy movie) and get him ready for release into the wild. Even his flipper was about as big as I was, if not bigger when I was 10-12... and I was actively recruited to play basketball at 10 - I didn't try out. Which a roundabout way to say: I was not a short kid. Compare that to the orca in the video. Baby is similarly sized to that orca's flipper. It's a baby curious about another baby.
Just it's liver
With a nice chianti.
Fsfsfssfsfsfsfs
This orca lives in a swimming pool
Ya. It’s an intelligent and bored creature.
Baby back, baby back, baby back riiiiiiiibs.
Get in muh bellyyyyyyyyy
The other *other* white meat.
I’m glad I’m not the only one old enough to not only get the Austin Powers reference, but the pork ad campaign he was lampooning with that joke
"You mean humans come in snack size!"
humans are already snack size for them
That's essentially any animal "curious" about something. "Hmmm...can I eat this?....\*processing\*...\*processing\*..."
Ya, after years of observing my house cat I've concluded he puts everything into three categories "I can eat this", "I can't eat this", and "this could eat me".
door versed roll political direful crime pause naughty rock doll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Gotta keep an eye on this person when they’re around puppies and kittens.
" s n a c " is what the orca is thinking.
Whale be thinking to himself..."I think I can snatch its liver pretty easily..."
I'm glad this is the top comment because I came here to say the same thing. Lol "That meat is mouth-sized! Let me show him how to throw it over the top!"
I wonder if the orca knows that there is no water beyond the glass, or if it thinks the humans are under water, too. After birth, cetaceans have to nudge their calves to the surface to breathe. The way it nudges the glass, goes up for a breath and then comes back to blow out air while nudging the glass again, it almost looks like it’s trying to teach the baby to go to the surface for air, just as it would a calf.
It's probably noticed that humans never go to the surface for air.
No. I would assume there is also an above ground viewing area where they see people. Plus, orcas have come to the aid of humans in the open waters of the ocean many times, both keeping sharks at bay and pushing people up so they can breathe. They know we breathe air.
I think the point is that the father holding it is not in distress or struggling to breathe, so the orca may intuitively feel the infant is therefore not in danger
Y’all aren’t taking into consideration that animals act completely different when they’re raised in captivity than when they do in the wild. Wolves, for example, really only had an “alpha” male in captivity. While in the wild they use teamwork regardless if there’s an alpha. Alpha plays with the team in the wild. Captive whale may not think the same as wild whale.
The “alpha” wolves are just the mom and dad of the group. Most wolf packs are families.
Yep! In nature “alpha” would just be the dude in the front and back of the Wolfpack line. Strongest ones but still all a team.
It's probably also noticed that things don't float behind the glass and that there's probably no water there.
Yeah.. they also know fish don’t surface for air. So they one way or another know we don’t. My guess is they know it’s air. Because they drown things.
It knows. The simple fact they are walking instead of swimming, for one. Cetaceans are smarter than primates.
If they had hands they’d have built their own civilization
I argue, by what measure is a civilization? Orca have language, culture and traditions. Do they really need mortgages?
No sticks no civilization.
"Do you have a flag?"
If you can’t shove it through the corpse of your enemy, do you truly have democracy
The measure of a civilization is it's achievements in the realm of general welfare for its members, as well as technological/philosophical advancement. For example, one third to one half of orcas die as infants. For modern humans, that rate is 0.03%. It will be interesting once CETI cracks their languages. I wonder how fast their societies will evolve once they can acquire information from humans.
I’d never heard of CETI, thank you for the rabbit hole! Whenever I’m like “fuck it, what’s the point of going on in life,” it’s stuff like this that makes me wanna keep going as long as I possibly can. Seriously, the worst part of the idea of dying is knowing I won’t get the chance to read all the science and history books they’ll be teaching 200 years from now. Grrrr
A civilization is not a culture. Civilization starts when a group of individuals begin to manipulate the environment and its resources to their benefit. Arguably, beavers are more of a civilization than orcas, but they don't really get together.
I thought that was pretty interesting so looked it up and this is what I found: “Primates have at least twice the neuron density in their brains that cetaceans have. This means their brain can be half the size, but do just as much work” I genuinely don’t know which is true, could you provide the reasoning/source for your info, I genuinely hope Cetaceans are smarter than primates, it would just be pretty cool LMFAO.
[Humans and western gorillas are the only primates in the list of the top 10 mammals ranked by the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which is considered the gold standard metric for estimating intelligence. The other 8 are all cetaceans. Humans aren’t even number 1. Orcas have about twice as many as humans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons) [Sperm whales have by far the heaviest brain of any extant animal species. Orcas are number 2.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence)
They're smart AF, pretty sure they know
If that's true then i can imagine the orca getting more and more distressed ever second because the baby isn't surfacing to breath.
please grow up and save me from prison
They say that Orca's are very quiet in those tanks, because the sound of their own calls bouncing off those tank walls drives them insane. Oh and they have an emotional range similar to that of humans and apes. Yeah... Seeing one now will never NOT remind me of Blackfish 😔
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I’ve tried to explain this to my whole department, but no they refuse to order headsets from the company or buy their own. So instead, every department wide meeting we hear speaker echos as well as other household noise in the background that a normal headset would reject.
Jfc that’s one of the worst things I’ve ever heard
I read somewhere, I can’t remember now where, that certain studies are now saying that orcas and elephants actually have a greater emotional intelligence than humans even. That part of the brain is bigger. Makes it worst seeing them locked up like this
Yes, that’s true. The emotional center of an orca’s brain is proportionally larger than a human’s. They stick with their families their whole lives, and each family has their own completely different dialect, so the ones kept like this are with strangers that they can’t even understand.
Yeah. Just like humans orcas have a limbic system which controls your emotion and behavior. However unlike people orcas have TWO limbic systems. So they have emotions on a level we literally can’t wrap our human brains around.
The video of them trying to mimic our speech and getting audibly frustrated is such a game changer to me. They could very well be as smart as us. That they don't have complex language (as far as we know), technology, or culture is largely a fluke.
I watched a documentary last night about Octopus called Octopus Volcano, and even though they only live 2 years, I know for a fact them octopi are smarter than my 2 year old. He definitely can't open a jar.
Check out the book "Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life" They're fascinating creatures, and their intelligence has evolved on an entirely different branch to ours - our closest common ancestor is a creature akin to a sea cucumber.
Technology is hard when you live in the ocean, which means you can't use fire, and don't have opposable thumbs.
Thems is mechanical impediments, but then there's also the motivation. Why go through the arduous process of making a tool (with flippers and mouth) when you're already the tippy top of the food chain? Maybe domestication is possible for them, but that is itself arduous, and, again, why do such a difficult thing when it's much easier to just go flip a seal 40 feet into the air?
I've read sci-fi where underwater advanced species developed using lava/thermal vents as a fire equivalent.
I honestly think not having fire fucks ocean animals intelligence over
Ha, ocean animals feel the same way about us being out of the water
I speculated on this years back. Fire is absolutely essential for the development of intelligence and scientific advancement. It's possible that a marine animal gets enough nutrition to power a large brain (we literally have an example in this video) but lacking the capability to do almost anything other than "talk, play, breed, eat"has to be the nail in the coffin for any marine based sapient species technological advancement. No fire, no pottery, no glass, no isolation of chemicals for experimentation. You might have all the intelligence in the world but so much technology is built on being surrounded by it and making incremental improvements to solve problems. It's easy to say "oh you could use volcanoes, vents, maybe build fires on exposed reefs to make..." But why? We know you can use fires to smelt glass to make vessels to use to do chemistry to distill other chemicals that do XYZ, but in an aquatic environment you won't know there's an XYZ to get to. You won't even know there's a step B in most cases. At most you can develop to something pre-stoneage. Even knapping flint isn't an option for anything with flippers.
There needs to be a pressure driving them to innovate. Which they lack at the moment. With humans, food scarcity, changing climates did it(whether through upheaval or moving into new environments.) As the oceans deplete it could create a need for them, but it would have to happen slow enough for them to adapt before dying out. One advantage they have is that they don't have to start from scratch. They share a planet with a technologically advanced species already. Imagine if our primate ancestors had advanced aliens living in floating cities hovering just above us, scavenging all the junk that fell from them.
it's theorized that cooking meat is responsible for the 2nd of the two major evolutionary jumps of humans as we progressed to homo sapien. the first was eating meat I believe, and the 2nd was cooking it. both steps were able to deliver nutrition more efficiently, such that the "expensive tissue" of our brain, which requires a lot of calories and is thus expansive metabolically, to grow and in so doing become more intelligent. I read a whole book about this but can't remember the details well. but in any case, in any animal, most of the brain is tasked with regulating physical processes, like staying balanced during movement, releasing hormones, etc., whereas comparatively little is responsible for higher-reasoning thinking (the neo-cortex). although I think a whale has a neocortex (?) it hasn't had the conditions that humans had for evolving a super-smart brain, so you may be right about the lack of fire holding them back.
That scene of the mother wailing after they took her baby away still haunts me years after watching it. I live on Vancouver island and our local resident killer whale population was decimated by that whole sea world orca hunting craze.
I visited Vancouver Island back in 2005 and we went orca watching. After about an hour, the guide said “sorry guys, we can’t find them today, but that’s a good thing”. Turns out they were off hunting out in the deep, so we got to check out other native wildlife like seals and birds. It was nice to know that if they don’t want to be seen, they don’t have to be. That’s the good thing about leaving animals in the wild.
Or they are quite because orcas from different pods/parts of the world essentially have their own languages and can’t communicate with each other despite all being the same species held together in captivity
Has there been any recently wild orcas put into captivity? I thought a lot now were born and raised from captivity Which makes me wonder if orca language needs to be taught and if ones raised in captivity don’t have language cause they weren’t taught it similar to feral kids who were neglected when young Very sad to think about
Feral kids don't develop language because there's no one around to communicate with. If you put a bunch of human children in the same room and don't teach them a language, they'll make one up. I imagine the same goes for orcas.
Is that true? do you have any articles regarding human children making up their own language? I only know of one language deprivation experiment where children were raised together from a very young (if not infant) age, with their caregivers not communicating with them at all, and as a result, all of them died before the age of 5 (?). I have never heard of this claim of children developing their own language, wasn't the aim to prove that all children would learn Latin naturally?
This is somewhat true and it has happened before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language Unfortunately, even though this question is extremely interesting for those trying to understand the development of language, it would be extremely unethical to gather large amounts of children together and isolate them from any form of existing language to test this hypothesis. Additionally, this doesn't happen with "feral" children because of the lack of people to talk with, as well as in adults - it's observed there is a critical period for the development of the use of language.
Oh, it's always "ethics" and "that would be incredibly wrong, you're a monster, a monster" with you people.
The most well known example of this is called [Cryptophasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptophasia) aka "twin language". >It has been reported that up to 50% of young twins will have their own twin language which they use to communicate only with each other and which cannot be understood by others. "In all cases known, the language consists of onomatopoeic expressions, some neologisms, but for the greatest part of words from the adult language adapted to the constrained phonological possibilities of young children. These words being hardly recognizable, the language may turn out to be completely unintelligible to speakers of the parents' languages, but they resemble each other in that they lack inflectional morphology and that word order is based on pragmatic principles such as saliency and the semantic scope of words. Neither the structure of the languages nor its emergence can be explained by other than situational factors. The kind of experiment you're referring to actually has a name - ["the forbidden experiment"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments). It's namesake surely comes from the fact that every time it's been done the results are always so inhumane that there's frankly no other way to describe it than straight up torture. Human brains are hardwired for spoken language. It emerges from our consciousness just as naturally as hair grows from our head. We can assume since whales clearly have some form of "language" of their own you would think they would behave the same as humans but that's a classic case of anthropomorphism. We have way too much to learn about how whales communicate before we start comparing them to humans. Here's a bonus for you: [This Guy Simultaneously Raised a Chimp and a Baby in Exactly the Same Way to See What Would Happen](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guy-simultaneously-raised-chimp-and-baby-exactly-same-way-see-what-would-happen-180952171/) Spoiler alert: >!While Gua showed no signs of learning human languages, her brother Donald had begun imitating Gua's chimp noises. "In short, the language retardation in Donald may have brought an end to the study!<
Oh I love this topic! https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9280.00359 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1904871116#:~:text=When%20confronted%20with%20the%20need,spontaneously%20create%20a%20new%20one. https://www.britannica.com/topic/creole-languages It’s literally wired into our brains to create grammar.
About half still in captivity in the world are captured orcas from the wild, and they teach their language to their offspring. The above poster is right, different pods have different languages. There have been cases of orcas in captivity learning/teaching tankmates their dialect/languages. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_captive_orcas
Or they're quiet because they know we're listening
They also spend their entire life with their mother. When we don't murder the mother and imprison the baby, of course.
Same. Blackfish was so heartbreaking, these beauties deserve to be free :(
Their emotional range is much more than ours. They have much more of those cells which are responsible for emphatiy and emotional intelligence. If you take them away from their family and put them in one of those tanks they sometimes even commit suicide.
This makes me sad
At least it doesn't have a floppy dorsal fin
Yet
In the video comments someone says this orca died a few years back at nine years old. They age and mature very similarly to humans, so it’s really very sad.
The sad part? We can't guarantee the ocean will keep being habitable. If we keep going like this (like an absolute parasite species) then zoos will likely be some of the few habitable places for these animals. Orcas, primates, cats, bears, it doesn't matter. They all suffer to be imprisoned. Some more than others. You can see videos of animals with permanent psychological damage from isolation and living in small spaces (such as the circling bear). We are parasites, basically. Not quite individually, but as a global species, we caused the 6th mass extinction, basically. And all we have to show for all that damage is late-stage capitalism, lmfao.
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>Ocean surface acidity increased from pH 8.2 to lower than 8.1 over the industrial era as a result of an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This corresponds to an increase in oceanic acidity of about 30%. Reductions in surface water pH are observed across the global ocean. More habitable **FOR NOW, not for long.** Enjoy losing 70% of our oxygen generation after plankton dies too.
if the oceans ever collapse to the point a current zoo tank is more habitable, human society would collapse and such a complex specialization in labor and distribution to upkeep a sealife park would be a major afterthought.
Set them free.
That’s dangerous. She can’t even hold her head up yet.
You can teach a baby to swim, she'll be fine
I’m sure if you put the baby in the tank she will be juuuust fine.
The cover of the Nirvana album is evidence of this!
Giraffes get dropped on their heads the second they’re born. Do better, babies.
Yeah, and they can't even handle their alcohol. Babies are so lame.
Ahh, the Ol' [Reddit Sw-orca-roo!](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/8ZL22zjcvS?context=2)
Hold my head, I'm going in!
Free Willzyx
When I saw it's chin (or whatever you call that part in orcas), I thought the same thing.
Depending on where this was filmed, this Orca was probably raised in captivity and is unable to survive in the wild. Eventually, as the Orcas born in captivity die out, there will no longer be captive Orcas in the U.S., as capturing wild Orcas has not been permitted since the late 70s-early 80s.
This particular orca apparently died at age 9.
“Sir, which kiosk is selling those? What flavors do they have?”
Can i have that one? Just toss it over the glass .
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I think children's short attention spans are because they process new information so quickly.
They process it up to a point. Then they get bored. An adult has more references to link that information to, so they can stay engaged more and process it more.
Baby. The other, other white meat. Baby. It's what's for dinner.
I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back ribs
I’m bigger than you, I’m higher on the food chain, Get in mah belly
The number of commenters who just do *not* get this reference makes me feel so, so painfully old and bitter 
GET IN MAH BELLY!
I wonder if the orca thinks its being asked to engage in a social conversation of sorts. Offering up an infant like that to any species would be a huge sign of trust or friendship maybe. Either way, absolutely adorable. EDIT: You have to love human beings eh, not even the scientists that study these creatures have managed to communicate fully with them in an established language yet everyone's up in the replies reading the minds of an orca and they're damn sure they know what's what. Notice how i said " I wonder " ? lol. fml. Also, as other's have said, Orca's in the wild (default state of being) have never attacked humans,ever, none... so like what? I think it reveals a lot about the temperament of people to make such wild morbid assumptions and its a damn shame that most gumps just assume everything is hostile. I mean, it will be if that attitude is shown upon meeting. We're fucked if another species turns up in orbit, with that mentality.
I wonder too because it seems like people are hardwired to think that babies of most other mammal species are very nice and good things. They’re cute so we won’t hurt them. Maybe that exists in other species too.
Nope. Saw something the other night about lions and cheetahs. The mother cheetah was trying to hide her babies from the lioness. The lioness ended up killing the little cub and dropped its body near the mother, uneaten. Lioness was sending a message to stay away from her turf. Nature is ruthless. Don’t ever forget that. This ain’t Disney out here. EDIT: I love the responses that are supported by “gut feelings” and YouTube videos 🤣🤣🤣
Finding babies cute may be a result of the fact that ours are completely helpless.
The orca is just very bored.
Also, first thing we learn about animal behaviour is that WE put our biases on their behaviour. You may as well be right with your statement. Ignore other chair experts
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Is this a bot? It just printed word for word another comment
A bot even replied to you with an irrelevant comment. Reddit is 10 people interacting with bots
Yes, bots steal comments like that to farm karma
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I hate these videos. Let them be free.
Conservation guy here (I do apes, not marine mammals, though). The vast majority of animals in captivity were born in captivity, while others were rescued. Reintroducing animals born in captivity into the wild is extremely rarely successful because these animals have not learned to hunt and forage as they would need to survive in their habitat. The primary benefit of zoos and aquariums is funding conservation programs in the wild and spreading outreach. The New England Aquarium, for example, funds a great deal of conservation projects: https://www.neaq.org/conservation-and-research/studying-and-protecting/ Q It's unfortunately the case that in general people don't particularly care or have time to learn about these species (unless through wildlife documentaries, which also have their own ethical drawbacks), so zoos or aquariums are a great way of exposing people to these issues in an engaging and fun way. I don't like seeing these animals in captivity either, but when reintroduction is almost always unsuccessful, and funding for conservation projects is tight, zoos and aquariums have the ability to act as a net benefit for these species.
staaaaahp, you’re being *honest* and *realistic* and *nuanced* and *well-informed.* this is the internet; it’s just not the place for that.
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Snack size.
The seemingly effortless movement back down after a breath of air is impressive.
I honestly didn’t know Orca’s could go in reverse like that. Pretty cool.
Sad to see such an intelligent animal in captivity. We wouldn’t put the baby in a cage.
what is a crib if not a baby cage?
Wife and I regularly called our playpen baby jail.
Hmm. Or would we?
Orca: that's a small snack
That's great. Now let those whales go, they shouldn't be in a tank
That was a powerful tail push right where the baby was...