Ologies with Alie Ward - Orcinology (KILLER WHALES) with Jorge Vélez-Juarbe

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Punted seals. Sunken yachts. Beach ambushes. And salmon hats? What’s even happening with killer whales? Are they sadists, or just hungry hungry hippos turned marine mammals? The Natural History Museum of LA County’s marine mammal expert  Dr. Jorge Vélez-Juarbe joins the show to chat about peachy babies, how their language is like a trucker radio, tiny whiskers, the formal wear, what’s with the nubbin teeth, if you should go whale watching, pod sizes, Indigenous folklore, captivity struggles, whales that meow, fatty melons and so much more. Also: baby whiskers. Spooktober continues, with these aquatic killers. Visit Dr. Vélez-Juarbe’s website and follow him on Instagram and Google ScholarA donation went to the Ocean Animal Response and Research AllianceSave the Academy Virtual Rally: Thursday, October 15 at noon Eastern. Register on ZoomMore episode sources and linksOther episodes you may enjoy: Oceanology (OCEANS), Delphinology (DOLPHINS), Selachimorphology (SHARKS), Elasmobranchology (MORE SHARK STORIES), Pinnipedology (SEALS & WALRUSES), Ichthyology (FISHES), Mammalogy (MAMMALS), Functional Morphology (ANATOMY), Hyaenidology (HYENAS) 400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topicSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow Ologies on Instagram and BlueskyFollow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTokEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oh, hey. Okay, first up top, if you're hearing this before Thursday, October 15th, at noon Eastern standard time. This is a quick invite to a free live stream I'm doing. Again, Thursday, October 15th, 2026 at noon Eastern. So that's like New York time. And it is so important to have you there. I hope you can come. You may have heard that Drexel University in Philadelphia has made this devastating decision to close the Academy of Natural Sciences to the public in Philadelphia. Imagine your local science museum, beloved for generations just straight up closing. So local activists like my friend, Dr. Sarah McAnulty, you know her as a squid expert from the toothology episode and the founder of Skype Scientist. And Karina Newsom from the Wildlife Biology episode as well as Dr. Jessica Ware from the Dragonfly episode, plus several other psychomers are holding a live stream on Thursday to chat about how the public can advocate for this really important museum to stay open. So come and spend lunch with us this coming Thursday, noon, eastern time via Zoom.

And the Zoom RSVP link is in our show notes. You can also go to save-the-dash academy.org and go to the events page and you can see what's going on. So please come to that. It would be amazing to have you there. All right. See you Thursday. Oh, hey, it's the lady doing the show opening. Allie Ward.

And yes, of course, obligatory. We have a whale of an episode for you. It is a killer. It's Spooktober. Let's chat about the marine mammal. that wants to see you dead because they are ruthless, bloodthirsty sadists. I mean, are they, though? Should we even call them killer whales? Let's get into it with the associate curator of mammology and marine mammals at my home away from home, the Natural History Museum of

L.A. County. I love it there. So this person got their PhD at Howard University studying the paleobiology of cetaceans and has worked at the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. We met up at L.A.'s Natural History Museum a few weeks back, and he ushered me into his bone-filled office with a smile. He was wearing a short-sleeve, chambray blue shirt, and some black, thick-framed glasses. He has one little Superman curl gracing his forehead.

I had barely turned on my recorder, and it was already good. Big jerk dolphins. Yeah. I saw I see that. Just dropping sound bites before I'm even rolling, Jorge. So we'll hear more opinions and facts in a moment, but first thank you so much to patrons of the show who submitted questions via patreon.com.com slash ologies

and support the show for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you to everyone in ologiesmerch from ologiesmerch.com. If you are opposed to hearing swear words in our episodes, you can always enjoy Smologies episodes, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. Wherever you get podcasts, they're in their own feed you can subscribe to. They're shorter, they're kid-friendly. And of course, thanks to everyone who reviews Ologies, which keeps it up in the charts. It's helped so much, such as this one from, what just left, from 101 weasels in a trench coat,

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Okay, onward. Let's talk killer whales. Scary. We can call it orcas too. So the name orca, it comes from the Latin, for a large bellied pot. Kind of rude. Some people call them Grampus, and I'd like to bring that back. There is evidence that killer whales was accidentally flipped. They were called whale killers because killer whales do

kill other whales, which then it still makes them killer whales. So take a deep, giant, lunged breath. Let's get below their surface reputation to hear about peachy babies, how their language is kind of like a trucker radio, tiny whiskers. Why the formal wear? What is with the nub and teeth? Do they actually want to eat you? Should you go whale watching? Do they migrate or stay put? How big is a pot? How long do they live? Whales that meow? Why do some live in swimming pools? What's with the floppy fin? How much fat in whale milk, salmon hats, and sunken yachts with mammal curator, paleobiologist and orcanologist, Dr. Jorge Veles-Huhrbe. My name is Jorge Veles-Juardbe.

He, him. Okay, great. Orcas. This is an exciting one. You don't know how long we've been waiting for this. First thing I have to ask out of the gate, Orcas versus Killer Whales. Let's get into it.

So, you know, all whales kill something for substance, for eating, for, you know, staying healthy. So they're all killers, so to say. I guess orcas will be the more appropriate way of referring them. Because you can also translate it easily to Spanish, it's or orcas. There's rarely any change. Again, they're all killers. Even the veiling whales, we just don't see it. Oh, that's so true. So much krill and shrimp in the grill and the grill and no one's like, oh, these shrimp are trembling out there. Yeah, exactly. Just a side note, this is not a blue whale episode. But for comparison, according to the 2020 paper in nature,

baleen whale prey consumption based on high-resolution foraging measurement. If for talk and body counts, blue whales who are not toothed whales like orcas or bulugas or sperm whales or dolphins, but again, a baleen whale, So blue whales filter out these tiny little shrimpie centimeter long krill, and they can suck up to 20 million calories a day in krill. 16 metric tons. That's 35,000 pounds in one day of krill. How many krill lives lost millions in one day to one mouth? Blue whales, serial killers, insatiable. And so killer whales, a bit of a misnomer and not really fair. Yeah, it's not really fair.

Okay, good. Not fair to all the other whales who are also killers. They're not like orcas who decide, oh, we want to eat a porpoise, and they slam the porpoys over the water or turtles. Seals? Or seals. Seals? They're acrobatic. Yeah.

They have the flare. Where do they live? I understand colder climates in the northern hemisphere. But what do I know? Usually, but they're found throughout the oceans. For example, they're found in the Caribbean. What? Yeah, yeah, they're orcas in the Caribbean.

They're probably everywhere where there's food. And that's the thing with cetaceans, especially if they're on the larger end of body sizes, they're very mobile. They move around. You can still have different populations of the same species spreading different parts of the world. But overall, they're the same species. so in our sinus orca. I thought that they were only off the coast of Vancouver and like in the Arctic and Alaska,

but they really can come as far down as the Caribbean. Like, why do we associate them with colder waters? Is that where they spend more of their life? I think that's in part because that's where people usually go and do whale watching for orcas, because some populations stay kind of local. So it's, if they're hanging out in some specific days, base makes it easier for people to go and see them. We do get really good ideas of marine mammal distribution based on sightings or strandings.

So things like strandings when they end up dead in a beach, it sounds sad, but it's something that happens. Yeah. And there are multiple reasons for it to happen. They provide a fairly accurate representation of the species that are living in a specific area. So we might think that they live in the Pacific Northwest, mostly because the North Pacific Ocean has several of what's called resident pods that just don't travel around. And there are several clicks up there. There are about 700 in southern Alaska in that region. Then along the west coast of Canada, you got the northern resident whale pods, totaling about 300 orcas. And then perhaps the most photographed and known are the southern resident killer whale. which are around the border between like Vancouver and Seattle and through the outer waters of the islands there. And there are three main pods. There's J, K, and L with individuals named like L-128, for

example. They're also given indigenous names now. And there are only 74 individuals among those three pods of the southern resident killer whales. And that community is officially endangered. And Mercedes-Maitland, our editor, a Canadian also, gave me the heads up that these southern resident killer whales are currently being further threatened by this port expansion to link up with this crude oil pipeline that environmentalists and activists and First Nations would not have given consent, except there was this Canada Bill C-5, which kind of let that go through. So if you would like to save the whales, you can make some noise for the southern residents before they become extinct. Now overlapping with those fish-eating southern resident pods are also transient roaming populations of orcas,

and those tend to prefer to eat marine mammals. And then there are the smaller offshore orcas. They're all the same species, but generally they belong to their own populations. So we got the residents, we got the transient, we got the offshore. But yeah, orcas in every ocean in the world, and they are the most widely dispersed mammal, except for humans, which have sort of infested the globe. Oops. And scientists do their best to gather the census based on sightings and, yeah, strandings on beaches.

And that can happen when a whale is sick or dying or when they're doing what's called an amphibious ambush of a land mammal and then they get stuck or when they get lost and they can't get back out. Sometimes there are mass strandings of orcas because a whale heads just. to the beach and the pod just follows them. But yeah, we have those resident stay putters, the transient rovers, and the ultra road-tripping offshore orcas. So some orcas have kind of stay local, where there's others that migrate between different areas. And we have other species of whales that do migrations. For example, great whales migrate south every winter to give birth in Baja California. All the way down here.

Yeah, this is a gray whale highway just off the coast of California. They're coming up and down. Gray whales, who cares? What's that got to do with Orcas? Yeah, I come back to Orcas being killers. For now, Orcas don't seem to have figured out where there's tons of new tender baby gray whales in this area. Because I think when they figure it out, it's not going to be great for the gray whales. Pretty snacky.

Yeah. Yeah. And let's say a gray whale is having. contractions and about to birth a child the size of a Prius. The perfect maternity ward is off of Baja, California, in Mexico. It's called San Ignacio Lagoon. And the entrance to the lagoon is like a really annoying driveway. And the waters are shallow. So orcas are kind of foiled since they're like, how do we even get in here? And they tend to hunt in packs. So they'll often use the advantage of depth to kind of sneak up and attack. However, a few orcas did.

cracked the code and they got in there a few years back. They ate a dolphin, kind of made some headlines, but in general, the tasty gray babies have been safe from orcas for several million years there. When was the first time that you saw an orca? Because I've never seen one. And do you remember, or do you remember, like, how you got introduced to them? Well, I knew about orcas, because I've always liked natural history. And then Free Willy came out when I was, I guess I was a teenager or so I don't like Free Willy. You don't like Free Willie. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. I've never seen it, but some people hold it dear. It takes a special friend.

Willie doesn't have a problem with me. We appreciate each other. Looks like Willie's got himself a soulmate. To set you free, Warner Brothers Proudly presents. Let's free Willie. He's got family out there. I heard him. So this film was released in 1993, and I watched the trailer on YouTube and the top comment read, I remember after I watched this movie as a kid, I imitated the Orca's high-pitched voice nonstop until my father came and slapped me. I'm 38 now.

So it was divisive on a lot of levels. It's about a whale in captivity who gets released. Yeah. Yeah, but that can't really happen. Not successfully. They tried with Keiko that they used, if I remember correctly. That's correct. And, yeah, it's like once they go in captivity or if they're born into captivity,

they can't really go back to being in the wild. So, okay, Keiko played Willie. And despite animal ethicists saying that orcas have personhood because they make decisions and they control their lives, Keiko was not nominated for an Academy Award, which is a bummer because I can imagine him right in the audience front row at the Oscars. Nude because he was born in a tux. But he lived outside of Hollywood at an amusement park in Mexico City.

And obviously after the movie, everyone was like, you've got to free the actor who portrayed Willie in Free Willy. Like, come on, man. So they flew, Keko by plane. I'm thinking first class, to Oregon. They rehabbed him. They got him ready. Then he hopped another flight, I mean, talk about a transient orca, huh, I'm right, to Iceland, where he had been kidnapped 20 years before.

He was finally released in 2002. This is almost a decade after Free Willy. And he linked up with a pod. They went to Norway. There he saw some humans, and he was like, hey, my buddies, because he had lived in isolation from orcas for so long. humans were what he reacted to most. And he had trouble adjusting. And Keiko died barely a year after this hard-fought release. And since history has a tendency to repeat, and Hollywood only banks on the remakes, there is indeed another newer version of Free Willy reimagined coming to the screen. Will it be a drama? I think so. Will it be called, well, Willie's cooked. Either way. Hopefully not, because I did read that they're not using any actual whales. It's just CGI. So, I don't know, even captive orca whale actors can't seem to find a gig these days. But speaking of real-life workas and depression. First time I saw real life orca, I think it was 2009. I went to Sea World San Diego.

I was in California. So I came here to California for a meeting that's held about every four years, where we meet for about a week and we present each other's work and talk about Wales and stuff. So one of the days in between the meeting with some colleagues to see Wales and Diego. It was the first time I saw Orcas. And my first thought was like, this is sad. This is really sad. Yeah.

Space is small. The orca, I was just like swimming in circles. Yeah. I was like, this is not right. Yeah. I remember too when Blackfish came out. And I think Tillam or Tillick, there was one whale, but in particular. Tillakum, thank you.

But their fins getting floppy. Yeah. Do they know what is going on with that? I thought at a time, it's like, oh, they're just because they're swimming in circle in the same direction. I don't know if that's the reason. But yeah, that's not a sign of a healthy orc. The fin is floppy.

It flips to one side or the other. So why the floppy fin? Well, they're in prison. So things are going to go wrong. And it can be from a breakdown of collagen, from air exposure, from the warm air. It can be from just swimming in circles because they have not nearly enough space. I mean, imagine being confined to something the size of like a king-sized bed. That's your entire life while someone forced you to do tricks in order to get fed.

I mean, the parking lots at these attractions are up to 100 times larger than the tanks for the orcas, who live in conditions so far from their natural habitat. It's a shock that they're even in water. And while some orcas are bred in captivity, one of the most infamous incidents of their capture was in 1970 when the southern resident killer whale population was effectively attacked by humans in West Cove, Washington State and more than 80 whales were abducted. Nearly a dozen were killed in the process, and this was for captive entertainment by places like SeaWorld and Marine Land. So every day, I can't help but think of how weird it is to live in the future's past. Like so many people

would be like, wait, people did that? That's so fucked up. And you're like, well, yeah. And if you do want to see an orca, but you don't want to see one who has either been abducted or bred for it, can you just go anywhere? Did Jorge see them growing up? And where are you from originally? I'm Oriana from Puerto Rico. I was going to say because there's something that's behind you, this is Puerto Rico. Yeah.

That was my first tip. Are there orcas that go that far south? Yes, there are orcas around the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico. And I know I have colleagues who work there. But they do possibly come that for down? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they definitely occur. I would have lost that round in a trivia show so hard.

I did not comprehend that they were so... And in the Southern Hemisphere, too? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. My wife was doing fieldwork in Antarctica, and she saw work as... What kind of field work does she do? She's a marine biology, so she was leading a team of divers to collect all sorts of marine invertebrates and bring them back into the collection.

Do you guys just talk sea life all the time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. After enough, so that our kids know very well what we do. What does fieldwork tend to look like for you? It's the most fun part of it. So fieldwork for me is going to remote places to look for fossils of animals that live millions of years ago and that no one else has seen before. So whenever I find there remains of any kind of organism, I'm literally the first.

human that's seeing the remains of something that was alive way before humans existed. So for me, it's always exciting. Totally so if I find something that I know immediately represents a new species. Like, oh, yes, this is. I get to work on this and eventually name it. But it's an immediate excitement. And it's the, for me, it's a thrill of discovery, whether it's a tiny piece of bone or something bigger. It's that thrill of discovery. It doesn't have any parallel to anything else.

It's got to feel like your birthday every time you find something, like the best present in the world, you know? And speaking of the fossil record and the evolution of it, you mentioned something about porpoises that are jerks. And can we disambiguate? What is a cetacean? What is a porpoise? They're a toothed whale. Yes. Right? So there's toothed whales. There's baleen whales. Yes. Really different types. of hunting. So they're all cetaceans. They're all cetaceans. Yeah. So cetaceans are fully water-dwelling fish-like creatures who are mammals, and they include whales, which are subdivided into the baleen filter feeders, like gray whales and humpbacks, and the toothed ones, like orcas and

bulugas and sperm whales. Now, a toothed whale is also dolphins, and they include porpoises, which are not dolphins, and we have a dolphinology two-part episode with the charming and hilarious Dr. Justin Gregg, who explains all of that. But the long and short of it, I'm going to quote a listener and orca researcher and science communicator Emma Luck, aka Northern Naturalist Online, asked us in all caps to pass on, please explain to everyone that killer whales are both whales and dolphins and that all dolphins are just-toothed whales. And Dr. Greg in the Dolphinology episode agreed and said that, yes, those words, dolphins, whales, they're all useless. I hate them all. He says, I hate the word whale and dolphin.

So we call killer whales whales. We also call them orcas. They're actually a dolphin species. And then you have pilot whales. Guess what? Also a dolphin. He told me, melon-headed whale, also a dolphin. And then you can also use the word dolphin to apply to porpoises sometimes, not dolphins. And people use it to talk about the dolphin fish, which is a fish. It's a mess. So if you hear oceanic dolphin, that might be an orca. Got it. And is an orca a dolphin? Yes. Orcas are dolphins. Our big, mean dolphins, I will say. And then there's within the same group that includes dolphins, there are other kind of subgroups or sub-families or families. One of those are the porpoises, and porpoises tend to be small. Think of Akita, which is the smallest living cetace. It's a small

porpoise that lives in the northern part of the Sea of Cortes. It's the world's most endangered cetacean. There's maybe about 30 or less remain. Yeah, there is a porpoise called of Akita, and there are fewer of them in the world than there are touring members of the band Arcade Fire. There's 10. Arcade Fire has 12. So they're kind of snack size for something big, like an orca. Snacks.

But an orca is a big dolphin? Orcas are nine-meter-long dolphins. They're big. They're the biggest of all dolphins, although not the biggest of all toothed whales. What's the bigger toothed whale? Spurn whales. Oh. And then, okay, so nine meters, so they're like 25, 30 feet. What is that in comparison? Like a bus? Is it about that long? I think that's- Okay. All right. All right. So they're big. And as I mentioned through April, 2027, the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, one of my favorite places has an orca exhibit. And so I walked through after this interview just to get a gander to chill. And there are these huge fiberglass models of a few real-life workas.

They're suspended from the ceiling so you can kind of walk in the shadow of them. And you can pretend you're a terrified fish or a seal. Here's what it looked like. I would say this is like the size of a bus, which is so cool. Oh my God. From the tip of the fin to the bottom of the belly, I would say that's easily like 10, 11 feet. Their fins are like the size of a coffee table. And like going to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and looking at celebrity likenesses,

there was information about the famous whales, well, the oceanic dolphins, that were gawking at. And it read Scarlet, aka J50, was the miraculous baby of the Southern residents. Scientists thought that her mother, Slick, J-16, was too old to give birth, perhaps because of Slick's age, but Scarlet's birth was problematic, and Slick needed help from the other orcas to deliver her baby, and they gently used their teeth to pull Scarlet from her mother. So Scarlet's name was chosen because her skin was scarred by the sharp teeth of the orca midwives. And the females don't have boobs, per se, but they have mammary slits, which are located on either side of their genitals. So calves nudge them, kind of like a drunk man, slap in the bar for another whiskey, and then she contracts a muscle and squirts in their mouth.

But speaking of ages... When they first show up in the fossil records around 3.5 million years ago, they were about half the size. They were about half their size. Yeah, about half their size. But they're already eating lots of fish, which some groups of forks do, as evidenced by the tooth wear. So as many of the oldest, we're not only discovering extinct species.

We're also trying to use newer technology to understand extinct species that have been known for a long time. Well, when it comes to their history, they were in the sea. They came up on land. They said, I'm over it. And then they went back in the sea. And that is how they were marine mammals. What happened there? They're related to kind of deer?

Yes. How? Some of the closest relatives are pigs and hippos. The closest ones, pigs and hippos? Yes. I know, they don't look anything unlike. Well, yeah, legs? I mean, like, where those go?

Those turned into fins, and then do they have back leg nubbins? They went from land, terrestrial organisms, to completely see ferns. We're comparing animals in about 15 million years. That's not too bad. It's low compared to other animals. Okay. There's a pretty good fossil record that document this transition from land to water in cetaceans. It's all about food, if you ask me.

They're exploring other places to find food or to fill in ecological spaces that were left empty by the extinction of marine reptiles. that were much more common during the age of dinosaurs. Uh-huh. So they're taking the opportunity and just going in, going for it. The front limbs eventually turned into fins. The hind limbs were eventually lost. And there's some really cool transitional fossils that document how the hind limbs are getting like trunk, trunk, trunk.

Some of the earliest fully aquatic whales have tiny, dinky blecks. Like a T-Rex in reverse? Yes. Which are eventually completely lost. There's still a vestigial pelvis. There's a little bit of bone that represents the pelvis, but it's almost gone. And according to this NHM exhibit, the first whales lived on land about 50 million years ago, and then during this like 12 million year glow-up process, whales went into the water, their hind legs,

shrunk, their tails grew long and powerful, and their nostrils became blowholes. Then they split into two groups we know today. The toothed whales, like orcas, they kept the sharp teeth of their ancestors, and then the blue whales lost their teeth, and they became filter feeders. But evolution does not stop. It's just too slow for us, tiny little humans, to witness on this grand water, back to land, back to water scale. So the work never ends, so to say. Well, okay, how big are their teeth? Because from afar, they look like these spaced out little nubbins.

But again, like, they're pretty far. Are they like the size of your thumb or the size of your longer finger? Like, do... I will say they're closer to size, like maybe half a banana. Half a banana. And are they sharp? They're pointy. They're kind of blunt.

But when they're... force, their bite force is exerted. They do some damage. So they're not sharp like what you would expect from like a shark to it. That will have two and edge of it will be flat and they're conical. They're more like a pointed cone. Depending on their diets, they wear down in different ways. So if it's eating a lot of fish or eating a lot of shark, the tips they start wearing down.

Some groups of orcas tend to prefer eating pinnipeds or other marine mammals. Yeah. I was curious about that because if I were eating some slippery salmon, I feel like it would go straight. And I'm an orca, I feel like it would go straight down the hatch. But if I'm eating a seal, I feel like there's got to be crunchy crunch. And so how does the same species handle such different prey? There's a very good question. I think it's probably preferences that have arise within populations related to availability of those sprays.

They're still biting. Although as kind of like as a general rule, they just have terrible table manners. They barely shoot their food. So they're reptorial feeders so that they're just like kind of bite and then swallow. If it's a big enough prey, their tears shunks off and then swallow. if they're eating fish, it's like, oh, bite and swallow. Bight and swallow. Others are what we call suction feeders.

They kind of creep up to their prey and open their mouths, creating a vacuum, and they slurp their prey in. Like noodles. Yeah. Like ramen. Well, so many people need to know salmon hats. What I understand is, like, 35 years ago, there were orcas observed off the coast of the Pacific Northwest,

who were balancing. dead salmon on their heads and no one knew why. Time went on, nobody saw it, and then the last couple of years, I think because we've slipped into a simulation, who knows? The salmon hats are back, right? I think the teenagers are doing it. Can you explain what is happening with this? It's Gen C's trends. So that's the thing about cetaceans as a whole. They're very smart. We've heard stories about, or we'd heard people say, oh, they're very smart. So there's many things that we don't understand about them. Because in some ways, there's some aspects of their biology are more easy to study than others. So I don't know what's going on with the salmon

hats. And Jorge is not alone. A lot of researchers are left scratching their salmon free heads about this Western North American behavior. But there are theories. So either it's just play and mimicking each other like a TikTok trend, but it also could be a signal to the other pod members that they found a good hunting spot, kind of like a visual dinner bell. Also, if the orcas are having a hard time hunting, they've been observed ripping prey and half to share with family. So it will share their fish stick. And so they are killers by necessity, but they seem to be socialist by choice. I like that. Now, some other hypotheses are that this salmon-wearing behavior, which was observed back in

1987, and then pretty much disappeared from our observations until the fall of 2024, they think it could point to like rare bumper crops of salmon, in which case the orcas may just be celebrating by being like, like Scrooge McDuck jumping in a pool full of coins, just like, look at all this abundance. Now, Andrew Trites, who works with University of British Columbia's Marine Mammal Research Unit, had kind of a bit of a shrug in terms of a very obvious reason. But he said tell the BBC that if these orcas are playing with their food, it might suggest that they have full bellies and that they have some free time on their hands. Other whale researchers have noted kind of with a sigh that salmon hats are a time for rejoicing because, quote, Tragically, getting enough food is rare for southern resident killer whales.

There's also some dolphins that have been documented using pufferfish to get high. Oh. So they, yeah. Get crazy out there. They do all sorts of weird things. I think we'll be discovering more behavioral curiosities as people dive more or record more. document things in different ways. There's just no end to what to expect for them. What is their cognitive capacity like? Are they remembering each other's names? Are they hunting

in ways that are strategic? Do they remember faces? Like, what are they dealing with up in the dome? They definitely have the capacity of learning strategies for hunting food and passing those generationally. Something very similar happens to how they communicate with each other. So there are generalized ways

that they communicate, but then there are so to say regionalisms within different pots. So much so that if we put together pods from different areas, it may be hard for them to communicate.

Just like if we were going to some other country and we don't speak the language. it may be hard for us. Do they have language? Yeah, I will say yes, from what we understand. There are languages, including within different pots. The way they communicate and the way they hear sound and the water,

it's another aspect that to me is very interesting. And orcas make these echolocation clicks, but we can eavesdrop on some orca talk from the southern resident killer whale pod whose calls the researchers have been able to capture because again they're residents there so they're easier to study and they've put hydrophones in the waters and one jpod call according to orca behavior institute.org is described as sounding like a sheep or a goat and again this is from jpod while the k pod call sounds totally different like a mewing kitten.

The L-Pod has, again, totally different call, sounds to me like an irritated parrot asking someone a question for like the third time. And I know that last one was like pretty high-pitched, but imagine if you were at like a concert and you lost your friends and then you heard one of them screeching in the distance, honestly, more effective than a text with a pin drop.

Do they have ears? So the external ear or the hole where the external ear will be its plug. Oh. Yeah. It's not functional. And this is one of the things that gets a little bit crazy. They hear through their lower jaws. Through their lower jaws?

Yeah. Like bone conducting? Bone conducting. Headphones? Yes. Yes. Kind of like that. And also when they're making the sounds to communicate or to get.

to know their environment, their echolocation. The sounds are not coming from vocal cords. They're coming from a special structure located near the nostrils called the bonyic lips. And it literally looks like a pair of lips embedded within their foreheads, within the fleshy part of the foreheads. What? Like near their blowhole?

Yeah, it's very off-putting. It's weird. A mouth in your nose at the top of your head. Science fiction aliens could never. Is it part of their blowhole or is it separate? They're connected. It's connected. They got a mouth in there.

They're kind of connected because there's a series of air sacks around their blowhole where they store air. And the air sacs are connected to the blowhole and also to the phonic lips. So when they're doing clicks and whistles and noises and. whatever sound they need to make, they're passing air through those phonemps and making those sounds. Are they opening their mouths as they do it? No. No, they're just doing it from up top. From up top.

And so the sound emanates from the phonics lips, which are adjacent to the melon, which is this fatty soft tissue structure. That kind of works as an amplifier. and the melon sits kind of in front of the blowhole, kind of like in the top of the snout, and it's surrounded by muscles almost all around. So the sound waves are kind of channeled through there, and they go out into the environment. So if you remember, like, the old-time Akumat cartoons. Uh-huh. We'll communicate with the sea life, and you see the sound waves coming from his forehead.

Aquaman! That's how I like to imagine it. That's my analogy. Off this melon, too. Yeah, through the melon. So sound is produced that way, goes out into the environment. It bounces off whatever's in front of them. And it comes back.

All the while, they're moving. So they're swimming. And the sound, it's picked up through the lower jaws. So it goes from water, through flesh, through bone. The back end of the lower jaws is very thin bone, and there's a fat pat on the inside that is adjacent to the earbones. Uh-huh. It goes from water through flesh, across the mandible, to the back end, through the fat pad, to the earbone. And then it kind of goes up.

Without even dealing with the external ear at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're bizarre. And yeah, that big old brain in the front of toothed whales' heads, meaning they're super smart. Well, that's not what that is. It's just good optics. Don't believe everything you see.

That's not the orca brain under there. It's called the melon. And it's this big bulb of fat and wax. Researchers think helps them hear better. But it looks amazing. And if killer whales ever make it back to land, perhaps one day they're going to want to invest in a bee. A Brazilian melon lift, caked up noggins. What kind of lungs we dealing with?

Because I picture them gigantic, like the size of me. Yeah. Yeah, they have very large, long capacity. Some species of whales are a deep diver going down hundreds of meters to find food. Hundreds of meters. Yeah. Ecolocation probably evolved as a way of finding food in the dark. So not necessarily deep diving, but in the evening there are deep water species of fishes and squids that swim up to the surface as it's getting dark.

That's free food. It's not free food. It's easy to catch. Yeah, yeah. But you need to see them. So you call it kitchen may have evolved as a way of seeing in the dark and expanding their food acquiring horizons. expanding their palettes in a way. And orcas can hold a breath, a single breath for typically about 15 minutes,

and some new research found that they come to the surface to breathe once in between dives. Also, they sleep in catnaps. Just one half of their brain is awake to make sure that they're breathing regularly. And just to, I don't know, keep tabs on things. But Dr. Beth Volpav, who co-authored the 2024 paper Killer Whale Respiration Rates, explained in an article that it's like humans retaining one breath for an hour. And put it in terms like, it's the equivalent of holding your breath, running to the grocery store, shopping, and coming back before breathing again. Our skin would turn blue and we would be dead if we tried

that. Speaking of, what does their skin feel like? Because I feel like it looks like a slip and slide. It looks like a wet tarp. But what? Yeah. Kind of, yeah? It's soft. The young ones will have a little bit of whiskers as well. So you can see some of their mammalian traits are still there.

So baby orcas can look orange or peachy where their white spots are because they haven't yet feasted on the 40% fat milk of their mom. So their blubber stores are thin. they haven't built them up yet. But apart from this like sunset colored skin, baby orcas also have, yes, vibrancy, which are temporary whiskers. They look like delicate, wispy little dashes around the blowhole and kind of where a mustache would be.

So it's like if you birthed giant orange Timothy Shalameh. Just precious. I know grables have because I've seen any baby grambles like, oh. I didn't know this. That was thanks to a, that was thanks. Thanks to John Graywell that stranded in 2020. And it was brought to our offsite facility. Yeah, I've heard about this offsite facility.

I heard it's got a tin roof. And in the summer it gets a little toasty in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little stinky and exciting. You get used to it. Like, you know, 15 minutes after you're in there, you don't feel, you don't smell anything. Real quick. We're going to dip into some stinky water with a quick bite from our functional morphology episode

with a comparative anatomist, Dr. Joy Ridenberg, who does whale autopsies for a living and whom I love. How did you get? Because, I mean, I've seen these videos of you scaling whales. I mean, the most badass you've ever seen. There's a whale on a beach. There are like a hundred spectators. And there's you in full yellow slickers with like a machete scaling it, like a time. tiny mountain and just cutting it open and like blubbers everywhere. I would like to play you a clip from inside nature's giants, wherein Dr. Ridenberg has arrived on a beach in the pre-dawn dead of night to lead a whale dissection.

And as she carves into the abdomen with something that appears to be a chef's knife. It's really, really fresh. I don't smell anything. It's like walking down the butcher's aisle in the supermarket. All the meat's really fresh here. This animal, I think, is only around 24 hours dead meat. Someone got a wipe, give my face a wipe down around my lips. It's funny.

The most dangerous thing is if you get it in your eyes or in your mouth, and so I know enough to keep my mouth shut, but... Probably poked one of the intestines, and that was just all the gas in the intestines just... Sprayed me in the face. Oh, far it. Oh. That was probably better in the mouth.

better in than that. The whale intestine has released a death fart into her face, and not only does she remain composed and professional, but jovial. What does it smell like? Yeah, well, first of all, it's a really good thing that smell of vision hasn't been invented yet. Because I think most people would turn to show off. Because the smell is really bad. I mean, just imagine you've got 65 feet of rotting flesh, you know.

You know how bad milk smells when it goes bad? Yeah. Now imagine you've got 65 feet of quartz of milk hanging out there, right? So it's a pretty bad smell when it's rotten. But like most things, you get into it after a while. Like you put on perfume, maybe an hour later, you don't even smell it anymore. But if someone else walks into the room for the first time, they smell it, right? I just looked this up and it's called olfactory fatigue or olfactory adaptation.

And our scent receptors essentially are, would. are just over it. They're like, I'm looking for danger or food. And if I haven't eaten this or been killed by it, forget about it. I don't care. The stench is like so five minutes ago. Well, that's what's like at a whale stranding. After the first hour, you don't smell anymore, but everybody who comes to visit smells it. And when you leave that stranding, everybody that you see smells it on you. Right. No matter how many showers you take. Really? Because the oil gets under your skin. And even when you're wearing latex gloves, it still gets under all that. And there's an aura about it.

It's, you know, like when you're around someone to smoke cigarettes and your hair smells, okay, it's the same thing. Your hair is going to smell. Your skin is going to smell. Your clothing. Even it was just in the vicinity is going to smell. What do you do? Is there like a special soap that you're like this, like this lead seed? Time.

You just have to wait for it to volatilize out. Because, I mean, you can wash off the snotty stuff that's stuck up. your skin, yes, that you can do. You can get rid of the oil that's on the outside, but you can't get rid of the oil that's moved into your skin. That's a good point. You know, it's now part of you. You just have to wait for it to evaporate off. So, boy, howdy, I have not yet been to the Natural History Museum of L.A. County's research storage facility, but if and when I do, I know I'm going to be changed forever. It's fine. You've got to keep them somewhere, just a big garage of wailed chunks. I mean, dream to me.

me, actually. That sounds like going to an antique mall on a Saturday. It just sounds like, let me in there. I want to see it. Between the specimens we have there, which are mostly skeletons, we also have a radically large collection of fetuses, but it's mostly skeletons of cetaceans and other marine mammals. And our fossil collection, we have one of the largest collections in the world. So as a total, it's huge. looking at a picture here and it's just like going to a Costco for whale bones and just everyone looks tiny surrounded and I see that some of you are wearing masks in there. Is that because of the pandemic or is that because of the stench?

That's the stench. Yeah. I get it. The first time I went there, I noticed the smell. And then the first time I went to a stranding, I noticed it's a special smell. Yeah. Sure. It can almost, almost be a sweet smell.

Almost. Almost. If they're not too rotten, I guess. But you know what? This is the sweetener of your heart? Yeah. Speaking of the opposite of that, let's talk a little bit about their prey drive and playing with their food.

I think we've seen clips of David Attenborough narrating over Seals being punted in the air. Oh, yeah. Okay, I was wrong. I did not see David Attenborough talking about this, but it was a whale watching tour who filmed this in 2015. And I would play you clips of the two guys who saw this, like literally hooting, hollering, chanting, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And quote, that seal went 80 feet up in the air. But they had this, like, expensive and scary license. licensing fee, so we're just going to link the video on our website. But indeed, you can watch, some guys watch whales absolutely launching seals like medieval treboshae. Imagine if you didn't have legs, but you're underwater hacky-sacking, something the size of a sleeping bag but filled with butter, eight stories in the air. Like rag dolls and then maybe they eat them, maybe they don't. where does this sense of we'll call it play come from? Or do they know?

They're very smart. So they do all these things that normally we will associate with human behavior. But probably because we see ourselves, you know, cats also kind of play with their food. Yeah. It's not that surprising that orchards will do it as well. Or just play with their food or potential food. Maybe it's just a way of killing them. Yeah.

for consumption. So it's, yeah, it's one of those interesting things of their behavior that maybe we don't fully understand yet, but maybe someday we will. Although one scientist from University of London did tell Newsweek that since seals and sea lions, and for the distinction between them, you can listen to our Pinapetology episode, since these marine mammals have claws and teeth, kicking them around first may be a way to a woman. avoid injury to the orca, at least. So they need to. Wait, actually, according to a 2023 study published once again in marine mammal science titled harassment and killing of porpoises by fish eating southern resident killer whales, orcas in that southern resident population have been observed harassing and then killing porpoises without even eating them. So the researchers hypothesized this could be for hunting practice, fun, or maybe an attempt to mother the porpoises, like playing dolls,

but once again, reducing them to rag dolls with a torn off head. Now, in terms of that last sad one, Hep Killer Whales hired a high-profile attorney masquerading as an work of biologist. The jury is out. Have you ever been to Benny Hana? Like a yakatory thing where they're chopping up on a big plancha? And sometimes they'll toss a shrimp in someone's mouth. Is it any different? Not really.

No, not really. No, no. You have seafood corpse and you're tossing it around for absolutely no reason. There you go. You see, stuff we do, we normally associate with humans. We're animals. We're animals. If we're going to do some finger pointing, they can do some fin pointing right back at us because some of us are.

Although there is some behavior that other people might, one person's cruelty is. another's mischief. Just a fun fact, the owner of Benihanna, his son is none other than DJ Steve Ayoki. Also, once someone sued Benihanna for millions of dollars because a chef kept trying to get a guy to catch a shrimp, but he couldn't and he got a kink in his neck and then through some medical mishaps that did not seem that Benihana related, he ended up dying from like a later surgery, but the judge was like, you know, leave the shrimp launching out of this. Unrelated. So I think the shrimp launching continues. Now, in terms of gladiatorial behavior, another killer whale spectator sport

is. But what is going on with the sinking of the yachts? I think off the coast of Portugal, where from what I understand, like a grandma whale is like, check this out. And now it's becoming generational? Yes. There was. Some observations that came out recently about this, they're not really trying to sing boats. It's more of a playful thing. You touch the butt. Okay. It's happening in the Mediterranean region.

I was in southern Spain in the summer, and some of our friends actually went on a jet, and at some point they were surrounded by Orcas. Later on, their boat was not working. Oh. They don't really know. because of the overcast because there are other things that were faulty in the boat.

Yeah? But there's a possibility. It's some playful behavior and that unfortunately it seems to be doing some damage. How do we know it's playful and not like a big

up view to the boats? You know? Because especially if the boats are loud or they're scaring away fish, I imagine the ocean is so much louder than what they evolved to deal with even though they have

bone-conducting jaws, but how do we know that they're not like... Or maybe you want to think they're this playful behavior. But would they eat the rich? Do they like the taste of humans? No. They don't like the taste of humans? No. Okay. We're not their normal prey. Yeah. They wouldn't go out purposely to eat humans when there are so many fish and seals in the ocean. Porpoises? Four fooses. So yes, if you need a relaxing beach read, you can crack open the 2024 Scientific American article titled Orcas Just Sank Another Yacht.

Orcas have once again attacked and sunk a boat near the Strait of Gibraltar, a behavior that has scientists stumped. And it opens with the line, the Orcas are at it again. And it explains that since the year 2020, there have been a series of over 500 attacks around the Strait of Gibraltar, between southern Spain and Morocco. And a very splashy, 2024 New York Post headline read, Killer whales sink $128,000 yacht in a terrifying two-hour Mediterranean sea attack. Like watching wolves hunt, witnesses say. And yes, some people on the boats have needed rescuing. No fatalities. What are the whales doing? Okay. Just nudging the boat. and biting the rudders, ramming the holes.

Now, over a dozen orcas have been spotted engaging in the behavior in the region, but three in particular have been present for the majority of the attacks, and they are named Black Gladys, White Gladys, and Gray Gladys, and they are female juveniles. Sometimes the older female whales will chase them off, like, go on, get. But there are hypotheses. such as it's retaliatory for past bad experiences or injuries with a boat. But one researcher, Dr. Jared Towers with Bay Cetology, said that that notion of revenge is, quote,

absolutely ridiculous. And other scientists say that the behavior is more consistent with, quote, teenagers who do reckless things or even, like, playfulness. So let's consult the science. There was a very recent August 2026 paper titled Insights, Insights, into a disruptive behavior of Iberian killer whales with boats, perspective from multiple interactions with a research vessel. Yes, of course that was published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. We're now learning, why don't we have a subscription to that? Because it seems like wall-to-wall, cover-to-cover good stuff. Anyway, it notes that the cause and purpose of this behavior are not yet

understood. However, Dr. Joanna Castro of the Marine Environment Research Association has noted that Orcas, as young as three, have approached their research vessels with, in one instance, a chunk of tuna in its mouth as a gift, which is not consistent with aggression with the boats, but rather kind of an exploratory, curious, juvenile behavior. So then we can relax, right? This is a truce. Of course not. Of course not. When do ceasefires ever hold? Rather, just a month or so ago, Tonya, one of the elder matriarchs of these pods, was spotted with what appears to be gunshot wounds in her dorsal fin. So it hasn't always been this way with humans, and it still isn't for many, especially indigenous nations. who have a beautiful relationship with orcas. The exhibit at the NHM features some really gorgeous work from Native artists, especially from the Pacific Northwest. And it notes that relationships with the supernatural orcas are profound and respectful. And among many of the indigenous peoples along the northwest coast of North America,

orcas are regarded as family members and ancestors. And there's indigenous folklore stories about brothers who went off to hunt and became a pair of or. Orcas as bearers of hunting abundance. There are stories about orcas guiding anyone who's drowned at sea down to deep underwater villages to become a whale. And they're also excellent hunters. So they're said to have descended from a single white wolf, which explains the white so-called saddle markings and their light belly and their eye patches. Oh, on that note. What about the coloration? Why are they so well dressed? Why are they shown up in a tuxedo? Oh, they're elegant killers.

It's very bond. It's very James Bond. It's very James Bond. It helps them do the whole shade and conjureate thing in the ocean to surprise or prey with the sun coming in. It makes them hard to see for all their animals. Yeah. They look very elegant, but it's just, they're trying to be sneaky. That's it. They're doing the whole killer thing. If you have a ballroom full of people in tuxedoes, it is hard to distinguish who's who. But that countershading means that they have a lighter belly. So if you're looking up, you can't see them. But if you're looking down, you also have a hard time seeing them. Yeah. And then what about like they have kind of panda spots around there? Yes. Is that to help with light absorption or reflection? We don't know? I don't know.

I don't know. So there are, of course, theories that perhaps that elliptical patch of white skin just over the orca's eye, just looking like a thick powder brow from 2016, that that serves as a good contrast background color so they can communicate to each other via eye contact. But they also are using their white bellies at times to flash light at schools of fish and then corraling them and tailwacking them to have a feast of stunned fish. But again, that countershading helps. So if you're looking up, their white belly is up against the light coming through the surface of the ocean. But if you're looking down, they're also harder to see because they're dark.

But yeah, they're whack and fish. They're eating mammals. They're being stealthy. But I got to say, I ate salmon sushi like last week. And it wasn't even my only choice. I could have had a tofu salad. So if they're a killer, I'm a killer. I just don't have to get my tail wet to do it.

So I'm going to save my preaching. But speaking of saving things, let's donate to a cause of Jorge's choosing. And this week, it's ORA, which is the Ocean Animal Response and Research Alliance, which monitors living marine mammal populations and response to stranded marine mammals and sea turtles along the Southern California coastline. And they work with research institutions and government agencies and aquaria and wildlife organizations and community partners to take meaningful action toward a healthier ocean for all. and you can find out more at o-a-r-r-ra-a-a-a-a-org.

And thank you to sponsors of the show for making that donation possible. Okay, let's sink our teeth into your questions. Her nubby little teeth, your tasty questions. Nora, Julia Reichelt, Amy Narasmatsu, Serafilo, Pachiko want to know. How long can they live? And I imagine Julia says that that's different

in the wild versus captivity. They can live a very relatively long life. Like some of these orcas that can be traced decades of people seeing the same individuals. And they can say it's like, oh, the orcas like now, she's in the pot with her daughter and her granddaughter. So they kind of stay together like a generational thing. So they can live long healthy lives. So just like us, females tend to live longer than males. And while the female average lifespan is about 50, there are some granny whales, like one,

a J2, also called granny, and they can live up to like 90 years. Males make it to about 30 years. But this is all in the wild, though. Now, with free food and housing and doctors, they've got to live longer, right? No. Absolutely not. So the 2015 Marine Mammal Science Paper titled Captive Killer Whale Survival notes that the first captive orcas were taken in 1961 and they were first bred in captivity in 1985. But the overall median survival estimate in captivity for captured wild whales was just six years.

And the median survival for captive-born orcas was 14 years. Very few captive orcas live past 30. So that's potentially only a third of their lifespans at most. So that's like humans dying at 12 years old. And I understand that the grandmas go through menopause and there's a hypothesis that that's to sort of not be sexual competition, but also to help the young learn how to hunt. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's so darling. It's very interesting, yeah. It's so darling that they're not. They're like, I have a purpose, which in, with humans, it's like, once you're past menopause, it's just like, go get a facelift and try and try not to talk to anyone. You know what I mean? Matt and Leslie, Leah, also Ali, Bonnie M. Rutherford, Melissa Foster, Cecilia de M. and Camille want to know a little bit about matriarchy.

Matt and Leslie asked, can we talk about them being a feminist icon? We love a matrilineal species. And yeah, how much is there a power structure? Do we know? No. That's one of those things where I'm like, I can fold it into the grandmother hypothesis. Yeah, they're matrilineal. So the females dominate in the groups, which is something very interesting.

And something we don't necessarily see often in mammals. For example, pinnipets or some groups of pinnipets are male dominated, other things like, big cats tend to be male-dominated. But having like matrilineal lineages or species that are matrilineal, I think, is something very interesting. Yeah. And something very cool to understand. I'm sure there's probably many more animals that are like that.

We just need to leave more research. And of course, hyenas, which yes, we have a whole episode with them. We just released it with also NHM-L-A's Dr. Christine Wilkinson, who told me she likes to distinguish between matriarchy and matrilineal. So matriarchy is when females are in power, like in elephant societies, which have a single female leader. And according to the exhibit I was touring through, orca societies around the world are matriarchal, the oldest female, leads her pod and shares her wisdom.

She tells the younger orcas, good places to hunt, areas to avoid. And grandmothers also care for the young whales. So in the leaner years, they can help the pods find food. They're like, I know a spot. And many indigenous societies in the north coast of British Columbia and many other parts of the world are matrilineal, the exhibit notes, where rank and privilege is passed down through the mother's line. So matriarchal is one lady in charge. Matrilineal is a transfer of power from mothers to their offspring, kind of like inherited wealth. Now, not enjoying a. matriarchy right now are humans. But we do have a very recent three-part menopause episode that we

just put out. So do please enjoy that. Bonnie M. Rutherford, into the deep sea, Cassavreed, Dean, Crystal, seraphylo, Norav, Faith Stemier, and Stephanie Davidson wanted to know. Stephanie asked how big is each pod. I don't know if a pod is like three whales or like a hundred. Like, do we know how big they are? It can be variable, and sometimes the different pods can kind of join together to form a super pod. Oh. So it's very variable. They can be a few or they can be many. It depends a lot on available resources who have in that space.

So it will vary across the world. So those famous southern resident whales near Vancouver and Seattle, they have three pods with about 15 to 30 in each pod. And the population off Alaska has 15 pods. And those range in size from three orcas to nearly 40. And when several pods congregate, it's called a super pod. Now, the transients, they're harder to observe, but their pods can be a handful of orcas. But sometimes they join up with over 200 others, kind of like a killer conference. Now, the ones offshore, those are likely the hardest to observe. They're out there, they're offshore, but they can group up numbering anywhere from like 20 to 200 individuals. Also, in Googling this, the search engine's AI feature popped up,

which I hate passionately, and I've tried to disable several times with little success. But the AI feature offered, people also ask, what is an orca pod called? The AI offer the answer, a pod. That's what we're using water for. A few people asked Emily Arnold, Mark Rubin, Kerrigan Richards, Katie Holtman, and Mie A wanted to know. Mie asked, I would love to talk about how they're the only natural predator of moose. Have you heard of orcas eating moose? I have a big memory of hearing about this. Yeah. I'm sure they'll predate on anything. that comes across their way opportunistically.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised although it wouldn't be like they will go out specifically hunting for moose like they would hunt salmon or moose which one do I want today? I think they will go for the salmon.

Maybe there was like a documented case of a moose that with a broken leg in brackish water or something. Yeah, it's like you know people have found license plates inside the belly of like tiger sharks. That doesn't mean tiger sharks are eating license plates. Yeah. But yeah, can you imagine they're like, you know what sounds so good as like crispy like a Pringles tin full of license plate just one after the other. You can pop, you can't stop. Yeah, there was one observed case in June of 1992. Four orcas off the coast of

Alaska, we're seen eating a moose. But this happened the same month that Bill Clinton played the saxophone on Arsenio Hall. There were no handheld digital cameras in regular people's hands. Back then, 92? If you saw Bigfoot, all you had was your honor and your word. So no one even confirmed this moose case. It's just like maybe, maybe not. Speaking of salmon, Nicola McLaren, wanted to know why does the British Columbia Southern resident salmon eating population not adapt to eating other protein sources as opposed to the salmon?

Mrs. Potato Head said, I live in Washington and our southern resident killer whales are endangered partly because the salmon they eat are decreasing in numbers. And so, yeah, would they move on from salmon if it's just not available? Well, it's either they move on

or they go extinct. Yeah. Animals can sometimes be very picky eaters. That's how I see it. Just like, I think I mentioned earlier, that some populations prefer eating fish, others eat other marine mammals. It doesn't mean that they can't eat something else. It's what they really like. What they like?

Crave. Some people are lasagna people. Some people are sashimi people. What are you going to do? Well, what about, you know, we talked a little bit about it in danger, but that would be, I think, a population, not the species. Like there's one species of worker. There's no subspecies? Maybe.

Maybe. Yeah. So there are documented differences in coloration and genetics, so much so that you can even say there are different subspecies. Who knows in the future, it will split into subspecies. Like, it has happened with other organisms. If you ask me, I will argue, it's like, just separate the species. protect them all. Well, you've got a meeting coming up, so you can always advocate.

That is most likely one of the things that people will touch on. Do Orca people ever get in fights? That's a good question. I know different researchers get very passionate about what they study. That's a yes. I don't know specifically about Orca people. I know about people working on other whale themes. and it's kind of fun to watch it from the sidelines.

Yeah. But it's kind of fun watching from outside. Oh, I'm sure that people get absolutely bent out of shape. And I love that. I would love to be a sea lice on the wall. But, you know, speaking of emotions, running hot, a few people wanted to know about grief. Rachel Barr says,

What can we learn about grieving from orcas? Milo Cuesta said, can we please talk about what we know on how they treat death, like helping dying elders, keeping babies that have passed for days? And Casabrid Dean also asked about if a baby dies, some mourning behavior. So there's definitely mourning behavior that has been documented. Again, they're very smart. And we mourn when someone close to us, the passes away, other primates do it as well, probably other, so to say, smart organisms

that will have their specific rituals for mourning. We know it for Orcas because they're so well documented. Yeah. Please don't make me read this People Magazine article from four days ago titled Grieving Orca spotted carrying her dead calf on her nose a year after a pod member exhibited the same behavior. And it says that Succi, known as J-31, is mother to one living daughter and has lost at least eight calves, researchers believe. So J-31, her pod members, J-36 and J-35, have also lost infants or children and have been seen carrying the babies in the water by pushing them with their noses. And J-36, Alki, carried hers for 11 days, while Talequah, who's J-35, lost a daughter in 2018, and then carried her around for 17 days. So why is this happening? Well, a lot of reasons,

but infant mortality in wild orca populations can be as high as 50%. And animal behaviorist caution not to anthropomorphize wild creatures in terms of labeling this as grieving. behavior. I would say killer sea hippos would probably whistle a sharp rebuke of anyone denying their pain and their loss. And for more on animals in mourning, you can see our spectacular Corbid Thanatology episode on Crow Funerals with the legendary Dr. Cayley Swift. I mean, Ravens and Crows have funerals, so there's a lot that we just haven't observed or having quantified or qualified, but Zachary wanted to know. Hello, Allie. Podson here. I I have heard tell that orcas have taken down blue whales that are confirmed cases of this.

Is this true? Thanks. If I remember correctly, there's maybe one case at least. It's not abnormal for orcas to attack larger cetaceans. the first stranding that I participated here after I started working here at the museum, it was a one-year-old compact whale. It was huge for one-year-old, of course. And it was very interesting to see that the tail had bite marks made from by orcas.

So it's food. They'll go for it. And they'll attack large sharks as well. So they're attacked big things. I guess if they feel like it, if they have a knack for it. Yeah, you got to make a living out there. Yeah. You know?

If they decide to attack a big whale as a group, it means everybody gets some food at once. Do they kind of rip at it like jackals a little bit? Do they kind of tear it apart and then nibble on chunks? Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. It's like a blood, man. in the oceans. Yeah, it's like nachos.

Yeah. Love it. I was like, come on, man. Killers got to eat. And then I read that orcas were observed by marine scientists. They said they swam inside the mouth of the enormous whale to eat their nutritionally rich tongue just before they died. So killer whales, they are not beating the allegations. Lydia Trump wanted to know about the orca population in Punta Norte. If you've heard about this, the intentional

stranding behavior. Do they hop up onto the beach and try to eat from there? Yes, seals. So they swim up very close. They kind of like almost beach themselves trying to catch some of these seals. They've probably perfected their technique by practice and passing down that knowledge. Right. It is great that they're like, hey, hey, hey, watch this. I'm going to teach you some stuff. How about Melissa Foster and Emily Swinson asked about Melissa asked thoughts on blackfish. And I know that I feel like when blackfish came out years ago, a lot of people didn't fully realize how capable orcas were and maybe how cruel it was to keep them in captivity. Do you feel like it lent sympathy to these animals that you study?

Yeah, I think it does. I'm not a fan of cetaceans in captivity. Yeah. Usually the size of the tanks where they're held are not. big enough and the idea of keeping animals like them in captivity maybe only if there's some rehab that needs to be done so the animal gets released back into the wild and I know a few cases back in Puerto Rico and my colleagues and they're kind of rehab and then they're released back into the ocean that that's okay but keeping them for the purpose of having them part of us I don't want to say circus, but I show animals. Yeah. I don't, yeah, I don't like that. I just wanted to drop the good news and raise the vibe that killer whales can be gay, or they can it very least be vicarious.

And they've been observed with their six-foot dongs ablazing in groups of males, doing some dry humping, it's really wet humping. They've also got some lady-to-lady activity that's been observed. But what's going on with their mating, though. Well, let's turn to the textbook, sex incitations, which I pray God, was a play on sex in the city, but they have a chapter titled Sex in Killer Whales, behavior, exogamy, and the evolution of sexual strategies in the ocean's apex predator. And it says that those male-to-male activities in young orcas may be courtship practice, but in general, orcas may outside their own pod by using those vocalizations to find a mate in another pod or maybe several mates. They're not necessarily exclusive. But this research also assured me that

despite their killer reputation, coercive mating or mate guarding in this species has not been observed and appears to be unlikely. So what a dream. Protect them at all costs. How about conservation? Grace Conroy wanted to know, are orcas endangered? Gardner Gabby said, how are their numbers doing? Felix LaSalle said, obligatory checkup. Are they endangered at all? And how can we help orcas? How are they doing? I think orcas are doing relatively well, although they are not back.

No single group of cetaceans or marine mammals, at least the larger ones, are not back to the natural population numbers that were present before whaling. The whaling was very bad for many different groups of marine mammals, particularly large cetaceans. Most are doing quite well. But they're not back to what was before, which should be closer to the normal for them. Whales are very important for coastal ecosystems. There's this cycle that's called the whale pump.

I don't know if you've heard about it. no. Orcas are large and they're kind of coastal, some of them. So they're feeding off the coast. They're feeding, but also they're excreting. Oh. You know, they're pooping back into the ocean. Uh-huh. Those are nutrients for other animals. Sure. And they help feed the plankton who feeds other animals. And it goes up the food chain back into the whales and even ourselves. So we benefit for this whale, it's called the whale pump. Whale pump. It's like a, poop nutrient food cycle. The poop cycle is part of nature.

Yes. We take advantage of it for people who like to eat seafood. Yeah, we have to be thankful for the whale pump. Right. If you're eating fish, you're eating part of the whale pump. Yeah, you're benefiting from the whale pump. So healthy whale populations means healthy environments, healthy marine biodiversity. Thank heavens for whale dump.

where would we be without them? We'd be hungrier. And so would the other marine mammals or fishes? Yes, yes. And whale dumps notoriously huge and really come out as like a cloud of poo dust. But one scientist's description of green, brown, or reddish, depending on what the whale eats.

I was reading that as I was eating a bowl of cream of broccoli soup. But the bright spot is I also saw a video taken at SeaWorld Antonio in which an orca crop dusts the water right in front of the crowd, just a nice plume of yellowish brown waist. And then the orca does a quick lap, circles back, breaches, and body slams the same water, showering the front several rows of jaw-dropped spectators, just raining its waste on them. So Orcas, there's a lot going on behind that melon. What about, you mentioned your favorite thing is when you're out doing field work. Is there anything else that you love about Orcas, like in particular that you admire about

orcas that you just go, that's so cool. Because, I mean, hats, sinking yachts, there's already calling each other by their names. there's already so much that's nuts about them. But is there anything that you're like, they really floored you? I think it's the whole way they make this sounds with this lips. And their nymphs in their forehead. Nothing else.

That's a pair of phonic lips in the forehead. Who else is like that? Evolution just went crazy on toothed whales. It's like, let's make these things weird, even weirder. You know, mammals will go back into the ocean. They lose the high limbs. Their skulls are asymmetric. Oh, also, their blowhole is way back.

And there's a pair of lips embedded close to the blowhole so they can make noise. It sounds like a really, like a, it sounds like an alien brainstorm. Yes, yes. Imagine that. If we didn't know what they really look like and all we had were fossils, it would be weird. What about anything that's really tough about the job? Not having enough time to study all these groups in particular or trying to, yeah,

I think that's probably the hardest thing. Like, cetaceans are so interesting and there's so much to learn from the modern ones and their foster record that I feel there's not enough time for a lifetime. to study them. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people are a relatively large group of people studying them. So all together, we'll learn more from each other. But I think that's the toughest part of the same.

But you all luckily get to meet up with each other. So that's good. Yeah. Oh, also Kelly Shaver, Matt and Leslie, Jennifer Grogan, Mimi, Aaron, Storm, Steve Posterman, and Ashley Widener, who wanted to know, in Ashley's words, can they discuss the ethics of whale watching? I know it's possible to find more ethical tour providers who stay the proper distance away

and try not to spend too much time following the same pods, but do whale watching tours cause harm? Oh, boy, this is a complex topic. And a few things. I have read that some people speculate it's terrible for the whales. Like it's being chased by noisy paparazzi and the boats scare off the fish. and none of the tourism operators respect the regulations in terms of distance. But I've also heard that that's a very small minority of bad actors. So I reached out to a few marine scientists and journalists I know.

And a huge shout out to the aforementioned Dr. Sarah McAnulty of Skype a Scientist for immediately reaching out to another scientist, Dr. Iman Huaja, who goes by Whale underscore detective online, give her a follow. And Dr. Huaja told us that, yes, There is a consensus on these from scientists, which is great. There are reputable whale watches that do incredible work and are not hitting any whales. In general, the research on whale watching is that there are reputable whale watchers that do incredible work. And the research on whale watching is that it doesn't hurt the whales.

And I also asked Dr. Sarah Curtis, who's a journalist whose beat for many years was weird whale and marine happenings. Like if there was a cryptid that washed ashore on a beach, she would be down there reporting on it and figuring out like, no, folks, that was just a de-gloved raccoon or whatever. Anyway, I love having her on speed dial. And she told me that the whale researcher she knows, who have like extensive experience with tourism outfits, have said that some species of whale moms will use the whale watching boats as babysitters. And they'll just drop the babies off, basically. and then they'll just like F off and they'll go eat and do things that they can't really do with their babies. And she said that because whales are so super smart that if they figured out some way to use our own things that could be problematic for their benefit, that would not be surprising. So thank you for chiming in Sarah and Sarah and Iman.

And also, Dr. Iman Huajah, you are on deck for when I do a humpback episode. Please come on the show. And thank you. So if it's done respectfully and following the distance regulations, it should be fine, especially since a lot of the operators, it turns out, are also marine scientists or conservationists who allow scientists on board to make observations and collect a lot of data. So if this interests you, do some research on the company, see if it's been approved or involved with any researchers or orgs and rely on like a good telephoto lens rather than just needing to get two up in the

Wales rostrums. That means a nose. I think both tours are relatively well regulated. They wouldn't cause any particular harm. I think that would be a safe way of watching them. Also come to our orchestra exhibit. You won't see a live one, but you get to experience and learn a lot about them. Yeah. If you're sea kayaking, should you be freaked out that one's going to come up and chop you? I wouldn't be freaked out that they will shump me, but I will be worried about them flipping

me over. Yeah. Sinking your battleship. Like the only time I was in the water, but I guess one of the times I was in the water and there were some large geish dolphins. Uh-huh. I was one of a few times. I felt a little bit scared in the ocean. And I've gone to the beach since I was very young.

Yeah. I grew up being a coastal town. So going to the beach was normal and swimming and, you know, experiencing big or small waves, getting stung by animals. But like being in the water and seeing this large dolphin relatively close, it's something else. So I can't imagine if you were out there. a bunch of orcas start trying to shake you out.

That must be quite unexperience. Yeah, by experience, you mean nightmare. But that would be my absolute nightmare of just being in a sea kayak and being the object of curiosity for things that like to punt seals. But I mean, only respect for them. Yes, yes. Only respect for them. So come to the NHS. and see the Orcas exhibit or get yourself on the shore and look for an Orca.

Thank you so much for doing this. This is the best. It's fun. Worth the way. So Orcas, are they just jerked dolphins? It's not that black and white. I mean, they kill and they can be menaces, but we are so much worse. So these killer critters are acquitted on every charge by me, your father.

Thank you to smart person, Dr. Jorge Veles-Horbe, for letting me ask not smart questions. You can follow Jorge at Borretheirium on Instagram. We will also link his research papers and the social media in the show notes. That exhibit on Orcas is up at the Natural History Museum of L.A. County in L.A. through next April. And before you go, you should listen to my field trip episode. I did years back to get acquainted with the place. Some things have changed around there since I recorded it, but the heart remains the same. I'm at Alleyward on Blue Sky and Instagram.

I'm at Ologies on both as well. Smologies are kid-friendly, G-rated episodes are in their own feed. They're linked in the show notes. Tell your friends with kids and your teachers. You can join Patreon at patreon.com.com. You can submit questions before we record. And Ologies merch is available at Intention. affordable prices at ologiesmerch.com. We do not make a lot of money from it. We just want you to

find each other in the wild. We also post your picture. So tag your Instagram's hashtag ologies merch and then we'll repost you. Aaron Talbert admins the ologies podcast Facebook group. Avaline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwired is the website nudging us toward our calendar is scheduling producer Noel Dilworth. Not our eldest yet still matriarchal Susan Hale managing directs the shebang. And like two fins steering us forward our editor, Jake Chafee, and lead editor, Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and Jake Chafee tooled the biomusicology guest David Bashwinner's piano rendition into something very spooky. And if you stick around until the very end, you know, I tell you a secret. This week, number one,

it's that I did it. Years. I've finally reached the number of open tabs on my browser, where the latest ones are just hidden. Like the icons cannot get smaller and they're just not showing up on the bar at the top. Chrome is like, get it together. Close some of these. We're not even showing you. And I'm like, Chrome, shut up.

It's 9 p.m. I'm in pajama pants from yesterday. I don't need that from you. I got to get this whale out my back door and I need these tabs. Also, I kind of don't even care because tomorrow morning I'm leaving for a little trip. I'm going to the Catskills. Those are some mountains in New York.

I'm also going to get to see my sisters and some dear friends. I'm so excited. The leaves, it's going to be pumpkins. Apples. I'm like physically nauseous from having butterflies. I'm so excited. I don't even own a scarf. It's going to be nice.

If you need more spooktober episodes, go to alleyware.com slash ologies slash spooktober. We got a lot. We got pumpkins. We got apples. We got bats. We got demons. We got monsters. We got it all.

So enjoy. And then later this month, some brooms and a little mothman lore are coming away. So stay tuned. Tell a killer whale. They're doing a good job. All right. Bye. I'm a killer.

I don't believe that. It's because you believe the lie.