2023年5月，虎鲸在直布罗陀海峡对船只进行了不下20次撞击，击沉了至少3艘船。有网友开玩笑称这些虎鲸为自己的“正义伙伴”，希望它们能多击沉几个亿万富翁，也有人讲述了虎鲸将大白鲨撕成碎片、将小鳁鲸和鼠海豚当球玩的故事：可爱迷人又没头没脑的虎鲸，究竟是正是邪？一方面，这些鲸类动物表现出了复杂的社会结构，拥有非凡的沟通技巧，生活在紧密联系的家庭中，使知识能够代代相传。另一方面，虎鲸在狩猎和一些致命游戏中表现出了暴虐行为，这些顶级捕食者的无情本性也让它们获得了更加阴暗的声誉。美国俄勒冈州立大学（Oregon State University）海洋哺乳动物研究所（Marine Mammal Institute）的罗伯特·皮特曼（Robert Pitman）在南极洲进行鲸鱼研究时，正好有一群虎鲸从离他大约两米的地方游过，他随手捏了一个雪球并朝其中一头虎鲸扔去，雪球击中后因为太干而散成了粉末。皮特曼想着那头成年雌性虎鲸可能完全没有注意到，但它却立刻停了下来，略微颤动了一下，然后潜入了水中。他以为这就完了，但随后，一个篮球大小的冰块开始在静止的冰层间浮动，紧接着，那头虎鲸游到了冰块旁边，低下头轻轻一弹，将冰块抛向空中。它不停地重复这个动作，整整持续了10分钟，仿佛皮特曼亲手教会了一头虎鲸扔雪球的技能。虎鲸的确非常聪明，具有令人难以置信的社交学习能力。它们和人类具有相似的寿命、育龄和社会结构。有趣的是，它们也有社交场景，就像我们的匹克球游戏或咖啡交友。“我认为（它们和人类）最大的相似之处是，它们也是一种全球性顶级掠食者。”美国非营利组织鲸鱼研究中心（Center for Whale Research）的迈克尔·韦斯（Michael Weiss）如是说，因为虎鲸会利用文化和社会信息来适应各种各样的生态系统，这正是人类在演化史上所做的。在1980年代后期，有人在美国西雅图西岸的普吉特海湾看到一头虎鲸脑袋上顶着死掉的三文鱼游来游去，随后，其他年轻的虎鲸也开始效仿，科学家称之为“三文鱼帽”潮（"salmon hat" fad）——一种持续了整整六周的夏季时尚潮流。2023年夏季，加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚的“潮鲸”开始玩捕蟹器了，而在欧洲的伊比利亚半岛附近，新的虎鲸潮流则是击沉船只。韦斯认为它们就像年轻人一样，只是在休息日找些事做。虎鲸生活在高度复杂的社会群体中，虎鲸妈妈会教给虎鲸宝宝它们须要知道的一切。出门猎食的虎鲸妈妈会把它们的宝宝留下来，用海带做襁褓，当作虎鲸日托所。不论是雄性和雌性，虎鲸宝宝会一直和妈妈呆在一起，这种家庭间的纽带可能比我们想象中更强。韦斯团队曾对一头名为J35的虎鲸进行跟踪研究。几年前，它的虎鲸宝宝出生后不久就过世了。它带着那头小虎鲸游了17天，时而用嘴托着，时而小心翼翼地叼着小虎鲸的胸鳍或尾巴。它经历了一次丧亲之痛，无论出于什么内在原因，它都没有准备好放下。它们错综复杂的社会结构和它们与至亲之间的深厚关系真的十分美好，包括它们学习、玩耍和感受的能力，当然不一定是我们人类所理解的快乐或悲伤。在一次早期的海洋调查中，当时还是年轻生物学家的皮特曼经历了一件让他对虎鲸产生浓厚兴趣的事。那是在上个世纪九十年代初，他在美国加利福尼亚海岸附近进行海洋调查。天还没亮的时候，有人打来电话说大约35头虎鲸正在攻击一小群抹香鲸。于是，所有人都丢下手中的咖啡，跑到甲板上看个究竟。他们看到抹香鲸形成一种车轮状的防御姿势，它们头朝内，尾巴朝外并不断拍打着围绕它们的虎鲸。这种“防御轮”看起来相当有效，但最终虎鲸开始将其中的成员拖出，然后一起攻击这头被拖出的抹香鲸，就像校园霸凌一样。虎鲸们偶尔还会追逐一只港湾鼠海豚，玩弄它，直到将它玩死。它们骚扰的这些海洋哺乳动物的捕食对象甚至和它们完全不同，所以这不像是和竞争相关，韦斯认为它们就是很混。在华盛顿州和不列颠哥伦比亚旁的萨利希海，虎鲸会玩一种致命游戏：它们会像玩抛接球游戏一样玩活海豚，这种游戏可能会持续长达5小时，海豚会因此承受身心的煎熬，甚至最终死去。但是，没人见过虎鲸最终吃掉这些海豚。皮特曼还在南极洲观察到了虎鲸追逐企鹅，将它们从海中攻击至上岸，然后扬长而去。虎鲸经常杀死一些动物却不吃掉它们，或者只吃掉其中一部分，例如企鹅的胸部和鲸鱼的舌头，然后让剩下的尸体被海浪拍打上岸。在捕猎大型鲨鱼时，虎鲸已经学会了锤击它们的头部让鲨鱼发晕，再将它们翻转过来，导致鲨鱼无法活动，即强直静止。然后……用某种方法把它们切开，把肝脏吸出来。在澳大利亚西澳大利亚州，虎鲸会拦截迁徙的座头鲸群，座头鲸体型很大，大约是虎鲸的8倍，所以它们会专挑座头鲸崽崽下手。如果遇到没有经验的座头鲸妈妈，虎鲸可以在不到1分钟的时间内进入座头鲸群并带走一只幼崽：其中一头虎鲸会游到座头鲸妈妈面前，分散它的注意力，另一头虎鲸则会从后方捉走座头鲸崽崽；大型雄性虎鲸会抓住座头鲸崽崽的尾巴，把它从妈妈身边拽走。当座头鲸妈妈变得狂躁时，虎鲸群就会从下方对它进行撞击，以此来杀死它，然后吃掉它的舌头，再抛尸大海。虎鲸因此还有另一个别称：杀手鲸（killer whale），而它的拉丁语名……[查看全文]
Are Orca Whales Friends or Foes?
Carin Leong: Orcas have been all over the news recently.Leong: Earlier this year the story of orcas ramming into yachts off the Spanish coast kind of took off.Leong: People on the Internet were calling them allies, hoping that they would sink billionaires and making other jokes about orcas being behind the Titan submersible tragedy.
Then there are stories of orcas ripping great white sharks to pieces and antagonizing all sorts of sea creatures from minke whales to porpoises.I found it fascinating that these hero and villain narratives exist at the same time—that these charming, silly, sympathetic animals could just as easily be cast as mean bullies. So to answer my question, I thought I'd ask some killer whale scientists to humor me in a game show I'm calling ...Orcas: Friends or Foes?I'm Carin Leong, and you're listening to Science, Quickly.Leong: Ladies and gentlemen, sea enthusiasts and skeptics alike, welcome to this one-time and one-time-only game show! I'm your host, Carin, and today we dive into an exhilarating journey that will challenge your perceptions of one of the ocean's most iconic inhabitants. Are they allies or total assholes? Welcome to Orcas: Friends or Foes?For years we've been fascinated by these magnificent creatures. But today we're delving deeper. We'll be speaking with scientists who have spent years studying orcas and know them inside and out. Are orcas truly the ocean's heroes, or do they deserve the less flattering reputation of being aquatic troublemakers?On one side, we have Team Friends.They argue that these cetaceans exhibit complex social structures, possess remarkable communication skills and live in tight-knit families that enable knowledge to be passed down through generations. On the other side, we have Team Foes ...Who point to instances of orcas displaying tyrannical behavior in their hunting and often fatal play. They argue that the ruthless nature of these apex predators has earned them a darker reputation.The game is simple: while our scientists won't be taking sides, they'll help us untangle the orcas' behavioral track record to evaluate the true nature of these creatures and how we relate to them. Representing them, we have Robert Pitman of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University …Robert Pitman: My name is Bob Pitman.Leong: … and Michael Weiss of the Center for Whale Research.Michael Weiss: Yeah, they're just the coolest.Leong: We'll start with a story from Bob. While surveying some whales out in Antarctica ...Pitman: I was wondering, "Gosh, I wonder if these killer whales even know we're here." So I made a snowball and threw it at one because they're swimming by, right in front of us, you know, six feet away in some cases.Leong: The snow, he says, was so hard and dry that he could barely make a snowball out of it. So he threw it, and when it hit, it just kind of turned to powder.Pitman: And I didn't think this adult female even knew what happened. But she stopped instantly and kind of gave a little shudder and then sank, and I thought that was going to be it.But a piece of ice about the size of a basketball started moving through the still ice and came out into the middle of the channel.And then the same killer whale came up right next to it, and she bent her head down and flicked this piece of ice into the air. And she did this for about 10 minutes.And, you know, to this day, I have to believe I taught a killer whale how to throw a snowball.Leong: Orcas are a lot like us. They're ridiculously smart and have an incredible capacity for social learning. They have a similarlife span and reproductive life and social structures. Interestingly, they also have social trends, just like us, that can be seen as the equivalent of pickleball or cold brew.Weiss: I think the biggest parallel is they are a cosmopolitantop predator …Weiss: … that uses culture and social information to adapt to a huge variety of ecosystems, which is exactly what we've done in our evolutionary history.Leong: In the late 1980s, for example, an orca in Puget Sound was seen swimming around with dead salmon on its head. Then other teen orcas started doing the same thing, and it became known to scientists as the "salmon hat" fad, a fashionable summer trend that lasted all of six weeks.The fad this summer in British Columbia was playing with crab traps. Off the Iberian Peninsula, though, the trend of sinking boats seems to be sticking around with enduring popularity. Just this month another boat succumbed to a similar fate after being attacked.Weiss: I think they are like teenagers looking for something to do with their day off.Leong: Killer whales also live in highly complex social groups where mothers teach their kids everything they need to know. Moms who go off hunting will drop their babies off to roll around in patches of kelp like they're at an orca day care—which is just adorable. Both male and female calves stay with their mom their whole life.And it's hard to overstate how strong these bonds are.Weiss: J35 is, I think, is special to all of us. She had a, a few years ago, she had a calf that died really soon after being born. We got a report that there was a new calf with her, and that was about an hour before we actually got on scene, and by the time we got there, the calf was gone.And she then carried that calf around for 17 days. She kind of switched between carrying it around on her rostrum, so having it kind of draped over her rostrum, and also, you know, having a pectoral flipper or the fluke, kind of gently, gingerly held in her mouth.Weiss: I try to avoid using the human, um, terms. I think she had lost something. Uh, you know, she had experienced a loss and for whatever internal reason was not ready to let go of the thing, like, literally let go of the thing she had lost.Leong: Wow, yeah. Their intricate social structures and their deep relationships with their family members—their ability to learn and play and experience, well, not joy and loss exactly, or we'll never know, but something akin to it—that's really beautiful.But now we're going to get into the awful stuff that might be harder to get behind. It's time for Team Foes.Leong: We'll start with a story from Robert again, but we're rewinding the clock all the way to when he was a young biologist in the early 1990s, long before he saw an orca throw a snowball in Antarctica. This is the first encounter that got him interested in studying orcas to begin with.So it was early one morning off the Californian coast, and Pitman was conducting a marine survey.Pitman: We hadn't quite started 'cause it was a little dark outside.Leong: But then people on the bridge called down and said that there was a group of about 35 killer whales attacking a small pod of sperm whales.Pitman: So we put down our coffees, ran upstairs and, uh ...Leong: What he saw was this: the sperm whales formed a sort of wagon wheel with each of their heads pointed inward while each of their tails slapped at the killer whales encircling them.Pitman: The sperm whales would form a defensive rosette. And this was pretty effective for quite a while, but eventually the killer whales started dragging members out. Then they would all attack that one individual.Leong: So basically they'd corner one, pull it out of formation and literally gang up on it like school bullies.Pitman: And then other sperm whales would come out and surround the one that was pulled out and take it back into the formation.Leong: You probably feel bad for the sperm whales right about now. But sperm whales are far from the only victims here.Weiss: Occasionally they'll just find a harbor porpoise and chase it down and play with it until it's dead.Leong: That's Michael again.Weiss: These marine mammals they're harassing don't even eat the same thing they do, so it's not like it's a competition thing. They're just kind of being dicks.Leong: In the Salish Sea in Washington State and British Columbia, orcas play a deadly game of throwing and catching live porpoises like a ball with each other for up to five hours—injuring, traumatizing and often killing the animal. But there's zero record of them ever eating it. Pitman has seen stuff like this, too.Pitman: In Antarctica, [they'll attack] penguins—they'll chase them around for a while and knock them out of the water a few times and then just swim off.Leong (tape): And then don't even eat the penguin?Pitman: Oh yeah. Quite often, they will kill stuff and not eat it.Leong: Other times Pitman has found penguin carcasses with just the breast meat ripped off. Killer whales are picky eaters with preferred cuts of meat. They've also developed a horrifying liking for whale tongue.Pitman: And that's all that they'll eat and just let the rest of the carcass drift ashore.Leong: And when hunting large sharks, they've learned to bonk them on the head to confuse them and then flip them over, causing something called tonic immobility to happen where the shark can't move. Then ...Pitman: Somehow slit them open and suck the livers out of them.Leong: Ugh! And there's more. In Western Australia killer whales are known to intercept pods of migrating humpback whales. Humpback whales are much larger—about eight times larger—and so they target specifically the baby humpbacks.Pitman: If they have inexperienced mothers, the killer whales can come in and take a calf in less than a minute. One killer whale will zoom in front of the mother and distract her for a second, and one will come from behind and grab the calf, and off they go.Leong: The big male killer whale will hold the baby humpback by its tail and herd it away from its mom.Pitman: And they want to get away from the mother because, uh, she gets a little distraught.Leong: And then this is when they ram it from below.Pitman: And that will kill it.Leong: And after all of that, they'll eat its tongue and leave the rest to the ocean.Leong (tape): By the way, do you call them orcas or killer whales? Or are they kind of interchangeable?Pitman: Yeah, they are. Weekend whale watchers tend to prefer the term "orca" because it seems less negative. But as it turns out, orca means roughly...[full transcript]
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