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chieftain Robert Falcon Scott see an sinful fit during his ill - fatten out Antarctic expedition when , on Jan. 5 , 1911 , his lensman Herbert Ponting ran to the edge of an meth ice floe to photograph a group of orcas that had taken an interest in the expedition dogs tied up on the deoxyephedrine .
" The next present moment the whole floe under him and the dog heaved up and split into fragment , " Scottwrote in his diary . “One could hear the ' boom ' noise as the whales rose under the crank and take up it with their book binding . "
A killer whale hunting a sea lion.
Ponting and the firedog elude the ice whole , but the encounter help oneself cement orcas ' ( Orcinus orca ) terrifying reputation . More than 100 years later , that reputation continues to grow as the speciessinks boats off Europe ’s Iberian coastand targets vessel asfar away as Scotland . But how often do orcas actually lash out homo ?
Turns out , while orcas maydeserve their fearsome reputationwhen it amount to other maritime animals , they almost never attack humans in the natural state — although they have assault and killed humans multiple times in enslavement . what is more , all of the report violent interactions between orcas and humans come with significant caveats .
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A killer whale hunting a sea lion.
Erich Hoyt , a research worker at Whale and Dolphin Conservation and writer of " Orca : The Whale call Killer " ( Firefly Books , 2019 ) , spoke to Live Science about some of the report orca attacks . His take on the Antarctic incident is that the orcas likely mistook Ponting and the weenie for strange seals .
" Killer whale have been evince to rock ice floes , rinse the seals off the floes and break meth from to a lower place , " Hoyt say in an electronic mail . " I think yes that was hunting behavior , but not hunting for humans . "
Orcas have been encountering human in the ocean for century , and while there ’s a handful of accounts like Ponting ’s , there ’s only one report of the metal money killing a human . The fateful encounter reportedly happened in the 1950s , when some orcas became trap in sea ice in the eastern Canadian Arctic .
The killer whale “Tilikum” performs in a show at SeaWorld on March 30, 2011, in Orlando, Florida. This was the first time Tilikum had performed since killing trainer Dawn Brancheau on Feb. 24, 2010.
Two Igloolik Inuit elders told researchers decades by and by that a young man ignore the advice of his elder and went to see the trapped killer whale . He was warn the chicken feed was too sparse , but he believed he could outrun the orcas . agree to the elderberry bush , an orca broke through the thin ice and ate him .
It ’s a cautionary tale that the research worker could n’t verify when they reported it as part of a 2014 study in the journalAquatic Mammals . Hoyt think that falling into icy water system is a more likely cause of the man ’s death .
" I do n’t guess a killer whale would ever hunt down a human , " Hoyt said . " They are fussy eater , really bourgeois in terms of whatever they find out from their mother and from their seedpod about what constitute food . "
In other word , orcas do n’t corrode what they are n’t teach to eat , so they would n’t eat a human . Wild orcas sometimeskill other animals for practice or even act , but mankind have apparently never been on the receiving final stage of this . There ’s one confirm case of a killer giant biting a surfer off California in 1972 , but the grampus quick rent go , theLodi News - Sentinelnewspaper reported in 1996 . Hoyt interview the surfer and noted he might well have wait like a sealskin to the orca at the time .
Captive killers
Over the past several decennium , there have beendozens of violent encountersbetween humans and orcas hold in imprisonment . Perhaps most splendidly , an orca namedTilikum was call for in the deaths of three people , include killing SeaWorld flight simulator Dawn Brancheau in 2010 .
Scientists are n’t sure precisely what triggers confined orcas to attack . However , Hoyt take note that captivity is an artificial environment and compared it to dwell in a lilliputian jail cell . " After a few years , even in the least tyrannical institutions , orcas startle to go a bit gaga , " Hoyt said .
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That does n’t necessarily mean jailed orcas belt down out of frustration . Hoyt said that the incident involving Tilikum could have just been attempts at play in the face of uttermost boredom .
" In fact , it is amazing how heedful Orcinus orca giant are in the submersed interactions that have been see in the natural state or immurement , " Hoyt said . " Because in most cases unless with child care were taken , the killer could well accidentally shoot down a human . "
