{"id":184700,"date":"2024-11-29T05:13:35","date_gmt":"2024-11-29T05:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/29\/videos-capture-orcas-tricks-for-taking-down-the-largest-fish-on-earth\/"},"modified":"2024-11-29T05:13:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T05:13:35","slug":"videos-capture-orcas-tricks-for-taking-down-the-largest-fish-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/29\/videos-capture-orcas-tricks-for-taking-down-the-largest-fish-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Videos capture orcas\u2019 tricks for taking down the largest fish on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"763\" height=\"456\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/survey_cta_footprint.jpg?resize=763,456&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Videos capture orcas\u2019 tricks for taking down the largest fish on Earth\" title=\"Videos capture orcas\u2019 tricks for taking down the largest fish on Earth\" \/><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>Video from excited ecotourists shows how orcas manage an unlikely feat of predation: killing a massive whale shark. And that\u2019s just one of the killer whales\u2019 conquests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Four videos of orca hunting sprees, the earliest from 2018 and the latest from 2024, suggest that an orca pod in the Gulf of California is specializing in hunting sharks and their relatives, researchers say. Other targets include such ecotourist faves as mobula rays, says marine biologist Francesca Pancaldi of the marine science center in La Paz associated with Mexico\u2019s Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional. She and her colleagues lay out their ideas for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/marine-science\/articles\/10.3389\/fmars.2024.1448254\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">orca specialization<\/a> November 29 in <em>Frontiers in Marine Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/e\/1FAIpQLSf83OekELCTbhuYw3Iu-p8OWiE9-uE56ZFNbeTapotBaa1rIg\/viewform?usp=sf_link\">\n  <\/a><\/div><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/e\/1FAIpQLSf83OekELCTbhuYw3Iu-p8OWiE9-uE56ZFNbeTapotBaa1rIg\/viewform?usp=sf_link\">\n<\/a>\n\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  max-width: 100%;\n  height: auto;\n  clear: both;\n}\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>Orcas rank as a top \u2014 and extremely versatile \u2014 predator in the world\u2019s oceans. <em>Orcinus orca <\/em>pods have been documented <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/orca-pod-blue-whale-kill-eat-gory-video\">taking down adult great blue whales<\/a> off the Western Australia coast, and harassing boaters off Europe\u2019s Iberian coast (<em>SN: 2\/3\/22<\/em>) They\u2019ll prey on sea turtles, cephalopods and seabirds. Some orcas will \u201ckarate chop\u201d a thresher shark. Others beach themselves on sandy shores to pick off vulnerable pinnipeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How orcas feed in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean has barely begun to be studied, says coauthor Erick Higuera Rivas, a marine biologist at Conexiones Terramar in La Paz. The whale sharks (<em>Rhincodon typus<\/em>) that orcas target are the largest fish in the world. Adults can grow to 18 meters in length, and possibly more (longer than a school bus). Whale sharks would be summer-movie extravagances of terror if only they had biting teeth. As filter feeders, they just glean the weak background-soup of ocean life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Orcas\u2019 physiology should hamper their ability to catch whale sharks. \u201cThey have lungs,\u201d says Pancaldi. The whale shark, with gills, can do infinite lurks and dive 2,000 meters deep, while its mammal predator has to break off the chase, swim up to the surface and breathe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"jRM9GngkaJY\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Here\u2019s what orcas preying on a whale shark looks like | Science News\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jRM9GngkaJY?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Videos captured by ecotourists are revealing for the first time how orcas prey on the world\u2019s biggest fish species, whale sharks. Shown here, orcas swim around a whale shark they have attacked, then one orca, nicknamed Moctezuma, approaches the whale shark, which has been flipped over and floats upside down.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>To eat shark, orcas have to keep the shark from diving, and it takes a pod, Pancaldi says. Orcas hound the sharks, and even the young and the small may join in, snapping or blocking escape routes. Flipping the shark over or otherwise jolting it into the scared-rabbit freeze of tonic immobility is a big success. Biting off the pelvic fins and claspers from the lower body doom the shark to bleed out. Then the orcas can feast on what they really want, the shark liver, huge and full of fat. The rest is trash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All four doomed sharks in the videos were young and small \u2014 merely five to six meters long. Three of the four videos show the same orca, a distinctive male, which the researchers nicknamed Moctezuma. But, the researchers say, it\u2019s the grandmothers, especially the matriarch of the pod, who transmits cultural knowledge, such as the technique for getting yummy shark livers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/videos-orcas-hunt-whale-sharks\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Video from excited ecotourists shows how orcas manage an unlikely feat of predation: killing a massive whale shark. And that\u2019s just one of the killer whales\u2019 conquests. Four videos of orca hunting sprees, the earliest from 2018 and the latest from 2024, suggest that an orca pod in the Gulf of California is specializing in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/survey_cta_footprint.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[3436,2116,5382,3493,2236,85607,14553],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184702,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184700\/revisions\/184702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}