this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seems to me the Orcas have started, and I think we should send them more billionaires in yachts.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Somehow I like the idea. I just can't figure out, why....

;-)

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Unfortunately they won't eat the billionaires. Even with all the possible "attacks" they may be playing, or they may be attacking the ships, but Orca eat literally anything that comes into their water, except us.

They'll attack in captivity, but that's solitary confinement in a bathroom, not even an efficiency apartment just a bathroom for their size. Would we be surprised that a human that was tortured for years in solitary confinement might just act a bit outside the normal behavior parameters for a human? No, we would not.

The only attacks in the wild on record, unless something happened extremely recently, have, historically, been because the human in question was inciting an attack with physical violence. The last one was in the late 1800s and the less said about that human, the better. He got bitten on his right arm, (the one that was wielding the harpoon,) but as soon as the Orca tasted what it had bitten, it didn't take his arm, meaning it didn't complete the bite. It barely bit him, tasted human, and literally spat him out. This threw the guy a few feet away. He had some gnarly scars, but he even kept full use of his arm.

This ↑: from a species that will absolutely massacre any Polar Bear that dares to venture into their waters.

We don't know what we did. We do know that Orcas and their current evolution has existed for a few million years. We know that we have existed for somewhere between 250,000 to 300,000 years. We know that dogs have been with us for the last 200,000 years. We now know that Orca, and all other cetaceans evolved from the same species of "primitive dog" that decided that land just wasn't where it "was at" (where it wanted to be) around 5 million years ago.

Given all of that, and the fact that we probably evolved from Chimps, the most vicious and vindictive of the great apes, except us, I have a theory. Sometime around 250,000 to 300,000 years ago a single Orca captured and killed one of us. The human involved was probably either a child or an elder. The orca thought that they were easy prey. Once they decided it was safe to share their kill with the rest of the pod, the humans came back with their entire tribe and massacred as many Orca as they could.

This event scared the Orca so much that they told all the other pods not to even nibble on the hairless apes. They used to hunt for us until we stopped giving them the reward, (the guts and entrails of other species of whales they would herd for us to hunt) and then they just started avoiding us.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Or we just taste disgusting.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Wow. I didn't know that polar bear tastes that good! :-)

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I'm not sure that polar bear does taste good. At least not for us. The global orca diet is not the individual orca diet. For instance if an injured seal is swimming near orcas that have a diet of salmon, jellyfish, and plankton, then even though other orcas eat them, that seal is, probably, safe.

I'm explaining this badly. Basically all the Orca worldwide will eat everything, but a single pod of orca have set diets that they go after almost exclusively. Apparently some of the polar pods have decided that polar bears are worth the trouble, which isn't surprising. The average Orca is about 2-3 times the size of a polar bear. They can bite them almost in half, if they needed to.

It's not so much that anything tastes "good" as far as I can tell, so much as their pod has eaten "this plentiful food" in "this particular area where we live" for thousands, if not millions, of years. It's what they are used to, and what their guts expect more than anything.

As far as I can tell, any Orca can eat anything, just like us. If that food wasn't what they're used to eating it will give them digestive issues such as gas or heartburn, just like us.