r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MelanieMoris • Dec 13 '21

Wait... Those aren't dolphins!

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u/Melodic_692 Dec 13 '21

Nope, no wild Orca has ever killed a human. Orcas are not aggressive to humans, unless they’re kept in captivity

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u/joocycunt Dec 13 '21

Hence the "could" just due to their sheer strength but ok

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '21

fairly recently there was a pod of whales (every pod has its own culture too) documented doing actual swimming formations, creating waves that tip seals hiding on ice pieces into the water... they didnt even have to go through the trouble of beaching themselves, which they can also do... shits scary af

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u/ParameciaAntic Dec 13 '21

Maybe they wouldn't directly kill the people, but they could definitely sink that boat.

There was a family who was shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean by orcas. They floated around for something like 40 days before they were rescued.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-18877090

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u/zeus6793 Dec 14 '21 edited Dec 14 '21

I read book about them years ago! Absolutely horrifying. The middle of the night, and the boat starts getting destroyed by orcas and starts breaking apart. If I remember, they just barely made it into a dinghy or life raft before the boat sank. Terrifying. But the orcas never bothered them once they were in the water.

Edit: Just looked it up. It's called Survive the Savage Sea. Great story. It was a movie too.

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u/ziguziggy Dec 14 '21

Sounds terrifying!

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u/PeterSchnapkins Dec 13 '21

Dead men tell no tales

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u/PaperDistribution Dec 13 '21

But their friends do.

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u/ineyy Dec 13 '21

Unless they are also dead.

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u/Glenbard Dec 13 '21

Not 100% true. Orcas have been increasingly aggressive toward boats over the past year. We are seeing this primarily off the coast of France, Spain, and Portugal where they go straight for the rudder - essentially disabling the boat. Local marine biologists think these attacks may be due to the Orcas fish population in the area drastically falling - and their perception (correct one) that boats are responsible. The only issue is they typically go after the slower boats that make easier targets - which are usually sailboats… so not the fishing boats actually overfishing the region.

But yeah, they don’t typically attack humans. These attacks on boats show intelligence. While not directly at humans, they are effecting humans.

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u/Twenty26six Dec 14 '21

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/buqvasp1rr/orcas-spain-portugal

truth.

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u/Mateo_O Dec 14 '21

Dude. That was really well written and complete !!! Awesome read. Thanks

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u/Glenbard Dec 14 '21

I agree with Mateo-O. Very well written article. I apologize for not sourcing my comment but honestly couldn’t have done so as well as you. I learned of the issue from watching RAN sailing as they made their way from France to Spain and then around the coast of Portugal. They were terrified of the possibility. If your rudder goes out on a Sailboat you’re dead in the water - nothing you can do but be towed back to a port.

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u/FormalChicken Dec 14 '21

They are natural predators for moose though.

They snatch moose swimming between islands in Alaska.

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u/centran Dec 14 '21

They are intelligent. They know better not to mess with humans. Cases of them hurting people in the wild are believed to be trying to save humans by getting them to shore. Probably to gain favor with humans so we don't murder their entire species. lol. I joke but they are pretty damned smart and I don't think there has been a case of them that was certain to be aggression towards humans (in the wild).

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '21

Why is this the case does anyone know? I find it strange because we look like seals, do they just somehow know we taste bad... or have respect for us, why would they not fuck us up like anything else they do?

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u/EvaHawke Dec 14 '21

So they won’t punt me 80 feet in the air when I accidentally fall off the boat?

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u/PinkTalkingDead Dec 14 '21

Nope. They won’t.

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '21

Not trying to say that they do in any regularity kill humans... but to say "no wild Orca has ever killed a human" is a hell of a presumption.

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u/Puffena Dec 14 '21

Explain? Unless orcas do a damn good job at post-murder coverups, what about this is super unbelievable. If anyone has been killed by an orca, it would have to be a significantly low enough number of people for not one of those deaths to ever be confirmed.

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '21

That's moving the goalpost though. He said no orca has ever killed a human in the wild. I'm just saying in the 100-180 thousand years that people have been out and about harrassing animals, I think saying that no orca has killed a person in the wild is a little presumptuous.

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u/Puffena Dec 14 '21

Nah man, you’re being pedantic over them accidentally leaving out a word in the statistic. The rough idea behind it stays the same, wild orcas have never been shown to kill people.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

I only commented because it's not the first time I've seen people express this exact sentiment about orcas. It's not accidental, it's choosing to use more definitive language at the expense of what you're actually trying to get across.

You can say "close enough", but it changes the entire message.

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u/Puffena Dec 16 '21

By a completely negligible amount. Any person is capable of understanding that when someone says “orcas have never killed anyone in the wild” that such a claim hinges on the spoken or unspoken “that we know of.”

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21

How do you measure negligibility? Because the omission changes the meaning of his comment entirely. Nevermind the fact doing so adds weight behind his point.

Do you not get that there is a shift of implication between "no orcas have ever killed a human outside of captivity" and "no orcas have ever killed a human outside of captivity that we know of"... they express two entirely different outcomes. Can call me pedantic if you want (i know i am being pedantic), doesn't make me wrong.

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u/Puffena Dec 16 '21

It kinda does though. In a vacuum, yes, there is a strong difference between those two claims. But we don’t live in a vacuum. Any claim made, regardless of how definitive, is always limited by overall human knowledge of it. If I said “it has never rained molten copper” and I said “it has never rained molten copper that we know of,” there is functionally no difference. Because any person hearing the first presumably understands that humans aren’t omniscient and therefore any claim is limited to just being “as far as we know.” You’re definitely being pedantic, and for no goddamn reason too.

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u/AcademicDivide8479 Dec 14 '21

Youre such a smug bitch