||| FROM NEWSWEEK |||
An orca has been found dead with a very strange meal inside its stomach: Six whole sea otters, fully intact, with a seventh stuck in its throat.
The orca’s carcass was found off the coast of the Russian Commander Islands in the Bering Sea in 2020. Investigating scientists then discovered the sea otters, weighing a combined 258 pounds, a new study in the journal Aquatic Mammals revealed.
The orca’s stomach was also found to contain 256 cephalopod beak parts. The otter that was lodged between the whale’s oral cavity and its esophagus may have been the cause of its death.
Orcas usually have specific diets within their populations, and they are rarely seen to eat sea otters, preferring seals, whales, sharks, sea lions and salmon.
“There are different populations which have different diets,” Alex Ford, a professor of biology at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., told Newsweek. “Some are fish eaters, while others eat marine mammals such as seals. Those that eat marine mammals typically accumulate more pollutants in their bodies.”
One other strange aspect of this finding is that when orcas eat their prey, they tend to tear chunks off, rather than eat something whole, as with the otters.
“Killer whales don’t really chew their food, but instead usually break up their prey before swallowing it by thrashing it or tearing between several animals,” Joseph K. Gaydos, a wildlife veterinarian and science director of the SeaDoc Society at the University of California, Davis, told Newsweek.
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