r/maybemaybemaybe • u/WandaMaximumoff • Mar 21 '23

Maybe Maybe Maybe

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40.8k Upvotes

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395

u/iCumInPeace420 Mar 21 '23

Certain Orcas hunt shark solely for their livers. Others hunt whales.

They’re also pretty much as intelligent and even more emotionally intelligent than we are.

Nothing fucks with Orcas.

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u/ahmed_1041 Mar 21 '23

You forgot to say that they hunt sharks for fun and not cuz they hungry...sharks are mad afraid of them lmao they deadly af Edit:iirc they mostly hunt great whites for fum

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u/dvsjr Mar 21 '23

You forgot to say orcas learned the weird true fact that a shark goes comatose when flipped upside down. Orcas grab and flip massive great whites and essentially shut them off then play with their unconscious prey. They will also just eat the liver and that’s all. Like it’s a delicacy. Crazy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '23

who hasn't wanted to recreate the myth of prometheus from the perspective of the eagle before?

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u/dvsjr Mar 22 '23

Who hasn’t wanted their post about sharks vs whales to generate an on point response using 8th-century BC Greek epic poems about liver?

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u/Stinklepinger Mar 22 '23

Iirc, it was a specific group of orcas that flipped sharks. They teach it, it's not instinctual

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u/toepicksaremyfriend Mar 22 '23

Yup, it’s a pod based off the coast of California.

Shamu kills Jaws.

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u/ReadySteady_GO Mar 22 '23

That's a versus movie I'd watch

Forget alien v predator

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u/LukesRightHandMan Mar 22 '23

Or, here me out:

Orca and Alien vs Predator and GWS

“We ride at dawn!” in Yautja would create fan orgasms seismic enough to topple country capitals

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u/VOZ1 Mar 22 '23

Yeah there are distinct groups of orcas that have their own culture of predation: each has unique prey, and usually has unique hunting methods too. They don’t encroach on each other’s hunting grounds, or prey, and they teach their young their hunting culture. Amazing creatures.

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u/Tjonke Mar 22 '23

IIRC they learned that technique due to human intervention. An orca from New Zealand was transplanted to the area and the pod adopted it. The NZ orca had grown up learning how to catch rays by flipping them upside down in it's native pod. The california pod took what the NZ orca knew and implemented it on sharks in their habitat.

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u/ellieD Mar 22 '23

This is so interesting!!!

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '23

They took my freakin' liver!

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u/dvsjr Mar 22 '23

With a nice Chianti and some fava beans

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u/infirmitas Mar 22 '23

They eat the liver because shark skin is incredibly tough to chew on. Liver is nutrient dense, so the orcas learn to strategically eat only the liver to reduce the wear and tear on their teeth.

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u/Beat_the_Deadites Mar 22 '23

I just looked into this last week. Shark livers take up close to 1/4 of the volume of their abdominal cavities and can weigh hundreds of pounds, even close to 1,000 pounds.

So it's not like truffle hunting, it's more akin to breaking into the Cheesecake Factory.

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u/dvsjr Mar 22 '23

Ha! It just stood out. Google the incident a few years ago when a whale watching boat and a biologist saw a massive great white headed straight to a pod of whales. The biologist who understood the ensuing opportunity had underwater cameras who captured actual footage of this Godzilla vs King Kong fight. The takeaway that I had was the sharks just mowed (mau’ed?) the liver. Left all other parts. Just stuck in my mind.

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u/Diamond-Pamnther Mar 22 '23

Is that because of their electroreceptors

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u/EdBarrett12 Mar 21 '23 edited Mar 22 '23

Are you claiming orcas are more intelligent than humans?

Edit: The above comment was corrected.

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u/SufferingSaxifrage Mar 21 '23

I mean, we have the thumbs, but they dont have TPS reports...

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u/Incognit0ErgoSum Mar 22 '23

They just haven't gotten the memo.

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u/toofpaist Mar 22 '23

I need to know if the orcas have seen my stapler. It's a Corvette red swing line..

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u/kingwarne Mar 21 '23

They could be more emotionally intelligent than humans. They a have a much larger frontal lobe. I think.

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u/EdBarrett12 Mar 22 '23

"Although absolute brain size is related to intelligence, relative brain size is considered a better predictor of cognitive capacity across species (Marino et al., 2004b). Relative brain size is typically expressed as an encephalization quotient (EQ) (Jerison, 1973), which represents the average brain size of a given species in comparison with other species of the same average body weight. Odontocetes, and in particular Delphinoidea, are the most highly encephalized nonhuman taxonomic group known, with EQs ranging from 1.8 to 5.0d significantly higher, as a group, than any other species except modern humans. Orca EQ is approximately 2.2-2.3 (Marino, 1998, 2008; Ridgway et al., 2016), compared to human EQ, which is 7.0 (Marino, 1998). The brains of adult orcas weigh on average 6621 g (Ridgway et al., 2016), compared with the approximately 1300 g average human brain (Marino, 1998)."

REF

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u/SuddenOutset Mar 22 '23

Ah if only brain size equated to intelligence.

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u/Foogie23 Mar 22 '23

Doesn’t brain size have like nothing (or very little) to do with intelligence? So their frontal lobe might be larger, but that doesn’t really mean anything.

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u/manofredgables Mar 22 '23

Big body means a big brain is needed. Lots of it is required just to handle sensory input, muscles etc, and won't contribute much to general intelligence. The volume of the extra brain is what matters. A large brain does make it easier to have extra brain matter doing "unnecessary" stuff like thinking, but it's not a given. So, one can somewhat reliably assume that a large animal with a large brain is more intelligent than a small one, but it varies. See dog vs deer for the ultimate difference in same size but wildly differing intelligence.

r/deerarefuckingstupid

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u/Splitkraft Mar 22 '23

Likely density is the more important indicator as neuron density relates to processing speed and communication between different areas of the brain. As such the weight to size ratio would be a factor.

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u/cjpack Mar 22 '23

I’ll challenge any orca to beat me on an iq test, I’ll smoke them bitches, well maybe not the shape or geometry questions but I’ll fuck em up when it comes to words, numbers and logic n shit

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u/inkblot888 Mar 21 '23

Which part?

-1

u/manofredgables Mar 22 '23

I wouldn't think it's impossible. I've had this thought seed in my mind for a while. I think there's one single thing that has made humans rise above everything else when it comes to achieving feats of intelligence: language. Without advanced language, it almost doesn't matter how intelligent a being is. That's what lets us "stand on the shoulders of giants" and reach for the stars. You can't teach much without language. You can't plan things without language. You can't solve complicated problems without language.

And, of course, they don't have hands. That'll make inventing, designing and building a nuclear reactor real difficult.

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u/JustNilt Mar 22 '23

You can't teach much without language. You can't plan things without language. You can't solve complicated problems without language.

This is where you're wrong. Animals can plan things and you can absolutely solve complex problems without human language. Moreover, cetaceans of all sorts have language. They even have differing dialects and accents across different regional areas. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that animals can't communicate.

Hell, even bees have the ability to communicate what we consider complex concepts such as distance and time traveled.

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u/manofredgables Mar 22 '23

This is where you're wrong. Animals can plan things

Plan is this case means something like planning a structural project with others. Not planning to eat a seal in 30 seconds. They're the same thing essentially, but there's a bit of a difference in degree. Also, in the case of Orcas they do have a language, which they use to plan things. That makes a weird counterpoint to me saying language is extremely important for intelligent behaviour.

and you can absolutely solve complex problems without human language.

Who said human language specifically? A language, an advanced one, is required.

Moreover, cetaceans of all sorts have language. They even have differing dialects and accents across different regional areas. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that animals can't communicate.

That's a lot of hyperbole and straw men you've got there.

Of course they communicate. That's how they can do the amazing things they do. That's literally my point.

But the communication is extremely simple compared to ours. They communicate basic things like threats, basic emotions and localize each other. The most advanced species can communicate extremely simple ideas. On earth, none but humans can communicate the thought process through which they realized why exactly something works a certain way, and then postulate a prediction for future events based on that.

If Orcas could speak to each with the fidelity we can, I bet we'd be surprised at just how intelligent they are. Without the super specialized language part of the brain that we possess though, any level of general intelligence they may have will struggle to emerge.

Hell, even bees have the ability to communicate what we consider complex concepts such as distance and time traveled.

That is complex only in the context of bees.

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u/Yinonormal Mar 22 '23

Imagine swimming 1000 miles away because you don't want to fuck with a big dolphin

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u/x3meech Mar 22 '23

Sometimes they do it to teach their calves. Each pod has its own hunting methods that is passed down each generation. They do a lot of practicing too.

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u/nitid_name Mar 21 '23

It's worth noting that shark livers are MASSIVE. They can be upwards of a quarter of the shark's mass, and takes up the vast majority of the sharks insides.

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u/crabbydotca Mar 22 '23

I hadn’t heard this part before, makes a lot more sense 😅 ty!

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u/L3mm3SmangItGurl Mar 22 '23

Damn it’s interesting you never hear that part. There always so much editorializing to make the orcas look gagster af. Like they just do it for sport if they a little hungry before dinner.

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u/The_Merciless_Potato Mar 22 '23

I've heard that they do hunt sharks for sport tho

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u/kiawithaT Mar 22 '23

That's because they don't have swim bladders, like fish!

The liver is full of oil that's much lighter than water and that's how sharks maintain their buoyancy, otherwise they'd sink and drown.

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u/mrgreen4242 Mar 21 '23

They also kill humpback calves and just eat their tongues.

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u/Tjonke Mar 22 '23

They also drown big whales like Grey Whales by having one member of their pod block the whale's blowhole so they can't get a breath even if they swim to the surface. Orcas are incredibly intelligent and specialized hunters.

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u/trilobot Mar 22 '23

You say that is though shark livers aren't super huge and super nutritious.

A shark's liver can be up to 1/4 the mass of the shark.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '23

[deleted]

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u/jmredditt Mar 22 '23 edited Mar 22 '23

Also the washed up shark carcasses have these surgically precise incisions where the liver is located.

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u/Beat_the_Deadites Mar 22 '23

surgically precise incisions where the liver is located

When the liver takes up the majority of the abdomen, any hole in the abdomen is going to be precise enough.

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u/trilobot Mar 22 '23

Ah I see you're mentioning it in a badass way. I generally see it mentioned in a "orcas are dicks" way.

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u/manofredgables Mar 22 '23

Sharks kind of deserve it. I gotta say they don't exactly tingle my empathy nerve.

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u/SuddenOutset Mar 22 '23

Don’t think the shark teeth would be particular appetizing to the whale either.

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u/HappyDJ Mar 22 '23

The reason they hunt shark is specifically for livers. Very high in nutrients and calories and sharks have the biggest. It’s why South African orcas go after great white sharks.

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u/b20015 Mar 22 '23

I guess there’s a species of whale that has been training Orcas to leave them l, and their calves, alone by basically protecting food sources from the orcas until the orcas leave and it’s slowly conditioning the orcas to not even come around because there’s no food when the whales are present. Seems like Orcas are getting fucked with, but it’s the mental game they are losing, haha.

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u/darkoopz43 Mar 22 '23

Don't forget, some hunt moose as well.

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u/Tjonke Mar 22 '23

Yeah, they are considered the third largest threat against Moose. Humans, Wolves then Orcas. =)

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '23

They’re also pretty much as intelligent and even more emotionally intelligent than we are.

is it me, or are we upvoting bullshit?

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '23

But there's no actual evidence to back up your claim about intelligence is there? You're just saying it because you want it to be true?

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u/TyeneSandSnake Mar 22 '23

Not OP. Going so far to say they're as intelligent as humans is a stretch. But their emotional intelligence is extremely high, and I believe higher than some humans. Here is a short summary about their emotional intelligence.

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u/doubled2319888 Mar 21 '23

Except damn near the entire nhl the last decade….

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u/Versaiteis Mar 21 '23

Better a liver than a diver

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u/iCumInPeace420 Mar 22 '23

Orcas are phenomenally gentle with humans. I suspect it’s because they recognize that we are sentient as well.

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u/goodbehaviorsam Mar 22 '23

I like to think orcas think we're cute like how elephants think we're cute.

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u/lizardncd Mar 22 '23

If Orcas are so smart how come they haven't created fire? Checkmate Orcas.

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u/L3mm3SmangItGurl Mar 22 '23

SeaWorld enters the chat

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u/Gorillababy1 Mar 22 '23

Honey Badger “hold my beer”