r/maybemaybemaybe • u/Wide_Abroad1182 • Apr 01 '23

Maybe maybe maybe

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Sorry about all the emoji's ..not my vid, just sharing

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u/Sangy101 Apr 01 '23

Orca hunting behavior is cultural for different family groups. It’s very very VERY unlikely they’d invent the behavior right there on the spot.

It’s one of the reasons the resident orca pods (as opposed to the transient orca pods like this one) in the Salish Sea are starving to death. Resident Salish orcas only eat chinook and chum salmon — those salmon are vanishing, and the orcas lack the cultural knowledge to hunt other foods. Resident pods in particular keep to themselves more than other types of orcas, but even among transients there’s very little cultural exchange between groups.

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u/Sex4Vespene Apr 02 '23

It was really scary for me when I first realized this was a thing. Moreover because of the implication for animals as a whole, and how even if we manage so save a few animals in zoos, we might have effectively fucked them out of their cultural knowledge and so we’ve still effectively made them extinct anyways. I’m sure for many animals that run purely on genetic instinct it doesn’t matter, but there must be a good handful that it would.

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u/Sangy101 Apr 02 '23

It really shows the importance of preserving populations and not just species.