||| FROM NEWSWEEK |||
There are no records of orca ever hunting and killing humans in the wild, despite numerous interactions between the two species.
Orca have been known to prey on whale species larger than themselves and they are the only known predators of great white sharks. Their diet also consists of seals, fish and sea birds.
These apex predators, which can can reach sizes of more than 30 feet in length and weigh up to 11 tons, would make light work of any human in the water, if they were so inclined.
Why don’t orca hunt us?
“It’s amazing,” Deborah Giles, the science and research director for the Washington state-based non-profit Wild Orca, who has been studying one population of killer whales in the Salish Sea—located in the Pacific Northwest—since 2005, told Newsweek.
“There are areas around the world where people are in the water with killer whales not infrequently,” she said. “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.”
The question becomes even more perplexing given the wide range of different animals that orca—which are found in waters all over the world—eat.
While all orca are considered one species (Orcinus orca), Giles said the various killer whale populations should probably be classified into subspecies, at least, if not full species, because they are genetically and culturally distinct. One of the main traits that differentiates these different populations is what they eat. In fact, different orca groups don’t see each other’s food as potential prey.
“The population that I mostly study in these waters only eat fish,” Giles said. “Although they are known to kill porpoise and sometimes play with them to death, we think they don’t eat them—they don’t take an even a bite out of them. On the flip side, there are other killer whale populations that only eat mammals. And then are the offshore killer whales which are more generalist feeders. We believe that their main prey is sharks and rays.
“It is astonishing, given the wide variety of different food sources that these killer whales around the world become specialists at eating, that there’s never been a recorded killing of a human killed by an orca.”
Even orca populations in areas of the world where killer whales have been targeted by humans for whaling purposes don’t appear to act aggressively towards us, according to Giles.
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I was just watching something on TV about orcas not killing humans in the wild. Thanks for printing this. The mystery remains!
There have been recent incidents where orcas attacked boats in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic Ocean offshore of Portugal and Spain. I don’t recall whether anyone died in these encounters, but they were certainly frightened to death.
To paraphrase Kermit the Frog: “Humans aren’t tasty, even with a lot of catsup.”