When you buy through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it cultivate .
scientist in Russia give away seven absolutely intact ocean otters in the belly of a beach orca , according to a new study . The doomedkiller whalewas find far from its normal hunting grounds , raising the question of what it was doing there .
The female sea wolf ( Orcinus orca)was found in 2020 on the coastline of one of the Commander Islands , which lie offshore the Russian Far East in the Bering Sea . Scientists performed a necropsy on the animal and find not only the seven dead sea otters ( Enhydra lutris ) , which collectively weighed 258 Syrian pound ( 117 kilograms ) , but also 256 cephalopod beak part .
A stranded female orca (Orcinus orca) was found with six sea otters (Enhydra lutris) inside her stomach.
Related : Opportunistic sea wolf have evolve a new feeding behavior that seem to be killing them
One sea otter was lodge between the unwritten tooth decay and the oesophagus , which may have led to the whale ’s dying , the researcher wrote in the subject , which was published Sept. 28 in the journalAquatic Mammals .
Several thing about the killer whale have puzzled the researcher .
" It is very unusual because orcas do n’t normally eat sea otters , " study co - authorOlga Filatova , a cetaceous researcher at Moscow State University , distinguish Live Science in an email .
Instead , they James Henry Leigh Hunt seals , ocean lions , dolphins and even other whale . And whatever prey species they hunt , " they normally do n’t swallow quarry whole — they usually tear it apart and deplete only the good ( most fatty ) parts , " Filatova said .
— 2 liver - eating orcas forced an full population of bang-up white shark to take flight their abode waters
— Watch orca tear open whale shark and feast on its liver in highly uncommon footage
— Lolita , the 2nd - old orca in captivity , who was set to be released to the natural state , has die
Gulping down whole ocean otter was likely challenging for the doom orca , as grownup ocean otter can reachup to 5 feet ( 1.5 meters)long . The researchers opine the orca may have taken this over-the-top step because it was starving .
The researchers also canvass the grampus ’s desoxyribonucleic acid and determined that this soul was part of a population , known as " Bigg ’s killer heavyweight , " that have avast home rangethat stretches from the Aleutian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska , to the coastline of California .
This is the first time any fellow member of this orca universe has ever been notice in the Western Pacific , leading the study authors to hypothesize that the orca learned this hunting strategy elsewhere . Feeding strategies are usually passed on from mothers to calves , the study authors noted .
While the stranded orca lift some questions , it may aid reply others . For some metre , sea otter populations between the Aleutian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska have dwindled .
While some scientists suspected orcas were behind the area ’s decrease sea otter universe , this is the first unmediated evidence of an orca originally from that neighborhood preying on ocean otters . The finding prove the possibility that sea wolf predation may be behind the drop in sea otter .
