||| FROM NEWSWEEK |||
A family in Canada had a pod of orcas come so close to their boat that they could reach out and stroke their fins as they passed.
“They were acting curious and friendly and came to each side of the boat. As we’ve grown up around them, we knew there was no danger in the interaction,” Chanel Nadeau Beaudoin, who posted the video, told Storyful.
Despite their ominous name, killer whales are generally no danger to humans, and have never been recorded killing a human in the wild.
Stock image of an orca swimming near to a boat. Footage of a boat in Canada shows a pod of orcas swimming close enough for the people aboard to reach out and stroke them.ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS
“There are areas around the world where people are in the water with killer whales not infrequently,” Deborah Giles, the science and research director for the Washington state-based non-profit Wild Orca, previously told Newsweek. “There’s certainly been ample opportunity for killer whales to kill humans and they just haven’t. It’s perplexing. It feels like one of life’s mysteries that we’re never going to know for sure, because we can’t actually talk to them.”
In incidents where orcas have appeared to be about to attack a human, they seemingly realized their mistake at the last minute and stopped, according to LiveScience. Additionally, there are various recorded occurrences of orcas being friendly towards humans, even playing with humans on boats.
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