Great story, but Orca's learned about tonic immobility years ago. This isn't really new news.
FWIW, Orca pods in and around New Zealand have been filmed doing the exact same thing with sting rays. When flipped upside down, rays go into tonic immobility.
You mean we've known about Orcas exploiting tonic immobility for years, right? I can't think of any analytical technique that would allow us to know when Orcas started exhibiting this behavior. As our methods and wealth have allowed us to observe more behavior, we have recorded more behavior.
Humans have been observing Orcas for a tiny sliver of their existence. Orcas discovering a major new behavior just when we happen to have the means of observing them seems breathtakingly unlikely.
> Orcas discovering a major new behavior just when we happen to have the means of observing them seems breathtakingly unlikely.
i wouldn't be so sure of that. of course just because we witness doing them something for the first time doesn't mean that is their first time doing that thing, but the mammal-eating orcas are rather adaptable animals are obviously extremely intelligent. due to receding ice barriers, orcas are now eating beluga whales, stealing from polar bears, which is a previously unknown prey for them. also, orcas were well known to be aiding fisherman and whalers in australia with documented cases of herding whales into a bay. even today, fisherman have been noted as witnessing increasingly new behavior in orcas tracking down fishing boats to steal their catches. whales off the coast of south africa also eat great whites, and they also chase down dolphins, including massive feeding frenzies off the huge (like 1000+) dolphin herds there. it is not clear when this behavior started, but orcas do not typically eat dolphins.
orcas also have other behavioral techniques that are very human-like. off the coast of canada, there are orcas who visit a specific shallow area to receive a massage off of the smooth pebbles there.
so i would say it's breathtakingly unlikey that orcas are not learning new techniques all the time.
i am not arguing about orcas eating sharks being new behavior. i was just pointing out that one of the most intelligent species on the planet learning major new behavior is not breathtakingly unlikely.
I meant it is a great article, but isn't really "news". I became an amateur Orca enthusiast maybe 4-5 years ago after seeing "LA Pod" in Marina Del Rey / Playa Vista outside of Los Angeles. Youtube has hours and hours of footage of how each pod hunts differently. The most interesting ones actually beach themselves on purpose to snag a meal right off the shore before carefully pushing themselves back into the water.
Yeah, I've seen video of an orca lunging onto a beach after some penguins, missing, then just sitting there sunning itself for a minute before humping back into the water like a seal. Really didn't expect that from a whale.
The matriarch whistles and the pod causes waves to knock seals off of the ice. The hungriest of the pod waits on the other side and grabs them. Then then share the food with each other. This level of coordination is pretty much unheard of in nature. Even dogs aren't this intelligent. Their level of intelligence is somewhat terrifying if you think about it.
It's way cooler than that when we first started noticing we also had biologists in the area with shark transponders. After the first attack the great white dove to massive depths, after a second attack a bunch ended up fleeing the area.
> Humans have been observing Orcas for a tiny sliver of their existence.
Obviously true. But in fact the dolphin family (of which orcas are the largest member) branched off of toothed whales only about 10M years ago, making them only a little bit older than hominids. We're both pretty recent arrivals.
But in how many of those 10M years have humans been observing and recording Orca hunting behavior toward sharks? The first writing systems only date back ~5000 years.
It’s mentioned in the article in passing, actually.
I believe the only news here is that they have been observed doing this to Great Whites for the first time (whom were previously considered apex predators).
According to this site, this has been observed previously:
"There is evidence that suggests orcas may use tonic immobility to prey on sharks.
In 1997, in the waters around the Farallon Islands, a female Orca was observed holding a White Shark upside down for 15 minutes, causing it to suffocate. Whether intentional or not, the Orca likely caused the shark to enter tonic immobility."
there is a great documentary called the woman who swims with killer whales which documents dr. ingrid visser's research and rescue efforts of the new zealand orca population. her research has done a lot to showcase that the orcas are in danger, particularly of toxins. she shows in the documentary how she recovers discarded rays and does toxicity reports on the rays to theorize what toxicity levels the orcas have, since they are their primary, if only, source of food. (the "resident", fish-eating orcas are extremely picky.)
FWIW, Orca pods in and around New Zealand have been filmed doing the exact same thing with sting rays. When flipped upside down, rays go into tonic immobility.
Here's a video from this in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqimOYOQjJ8
And a guy with way bigger balls than me demonstrating it on a shark underwater:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHr_MshhXuk