It all began, researchers are coming to believe, when White Gladis encountered a fishing boat.
[She] suffered a “critical moment of agony” — a collision with a boat or entrapment during illegal fishing — that flipped a behavioral switch. “That traumatized orca is the one that started this behavior of physical contact with the boat,” López Fernandez said.
That “physical contact” suggests that the gospel according to Moby Dick may still resonate in cetacean circles:
Orcas have attacked and sunk a third boat off the Iberian coast of Europe, and experts now believe the behavior is being copied by the rest of the population.
Three orcas (Orcinus orca), also known as killer whales, struck the yacht on the night of May 4 in the Strait of Gibraltar, off the coast of Spain, and pierced the rudder. “There were two smaller and one larger orca,” skipper Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht. “The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side.”
It appears that once White Gladis decided enough was enough, her rage and her response began to diffuse into the local orca society–if not necessarily by formal instruction:
“We do not interpret that the orcas are teaching the young, although the behavior has spread to the young vertically, simply by imitation, and later horizontally among them, because they consider it something important in their lives,” López Fernandez said.
This behavior may pass if and when the whales get bored with the sport. In any event, it’s no joke. The Iberian orca population has dwindled to just 39 known individuals, as of the last census to be taken, more than a decade ago. If and as encounters–whether incited by humans in their boats or by enraged animals–lead to more orca deaths, that will be one more wound in a world burden by so much loss.
But in the meantime, here’s a remote cheer for a bunch of creatures getting mad as hell and not taking it anymore.
While I pat myself on the back for omitting every Melville-inspired joke, this thread is open.
Images: Pieter Lastman, Jonah and the Whale, 1621.
“Extended Warranty” courtesy of Adam Silverman, local memelord.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Orca Overlords…Post + Comments (123)