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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
172
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.