KILLER WHALES

...and God said to the great whales;
"You are good but the sins of man are many.
Lo! I will surround you with a blanket of deep waters
away from the sins of man.
Go now, to the peace of the plankton sea."

And so they lived a million years in the peace of the plankton sea,
Dreaming a dream of a million years in the peace of plankton sea.
And in that dream an agony, of lonely tides and empty sea.

God saw that they were lonely in the garden in the sea
He sighed and turned, again men came.
Steel ships upon the sea.

EVOLUTION

Fifty million or so years ago a social wolf-like animal with hooves like the horse, soon to become the predecessor of modern whales and dolphins, diverged from the mammals of the land, including the little pre-ape that was to become man, and re-entered the sea. Today the killer whale, the largest of the dolphins, enjoys an occasional bite out of the flesh of his not-so-distant cousins the whale.

ANTHROMORPHIC PATTERNS

Today killer whales are, like man, grouped into three distinct races.

(A) Residents: these killer whales tend to live in the most stable groups, thirty or so, and their movements coincide with fish migrations, and they seldom stay under water more than three or four minutes at a time. They speak a different dialect of killer whalesse than the other two races and no calls are shared by the other two types.

(B) Transits: Transits are somewhat like maurading vikings, hugging the shore line as they travel, opportunely pillaging, and sometime harrassing sea birds which they seldom eat. Their vocalizations are by killer whale standards, primitive. But when they do vocalize they seem to have the same basic dialect. Maybe this is because they have a very fluid social structure, so unique dialects have little chance to evolve.

(C) Offshore: Offshore groups are mostly distinguable by their behavior but subtle differences exist, such as the shape of the tip of the dorsal fin. They apear to be smaller than the other two races and do not appear to mix.
They feed mostly on fish and little is known of what they speak.

FROM KILLER WHALES BBC MARK CARWARDINE

Save the krill - kill a whale!

So, Max, you're referring to baleen whales as kriller whales?

The killer whales have a very wide range of behaviour. I have read about their breaking the ice under seal hunters, and eating them. I have seen them do tricks at SeaWorld. And in New Scientist about three years ago, there was a story about their helping fishermen by herding schools of fish into the nets, greatly increasing the catch.

you guys are krilling me..

but for real, do other dolphins go by special names? or are they just dolphins -- several species, and orca's the black and white ones.. (and are them limited to arctic and sub arctic waters? or is it the antarctic they live in? i remember that their coloring makes them hard to detect in the water-- white belly looks like the sunlight above, dark back, little contrast when looking through the water from above... all better to sneak up on penguins.. (oops, i guess i answered my own question.. penguins are antarctic.. but what about auks are they arctic? )

I saw an article about the orcas threatening to wipe out sea otters that had only recently started to make a comeback from so many having been killed by abalone fishermen. They also eat seals. And they get their name from their ferocity in action.

interesting isn't it how we call them ferocious-- meanwhile, humans kill more animals than any other species!

Sure we have 'humane' killing devices in our slaughter houses, but all the same the animal is dead.. but Orca are ferocious!(not that i am one to talk, i like red meat, and pork, and chicken just as much as the next guy-- more, if the next guy is a vegan!)

Save the Plankton!

Save the Plankton! Or more commonly known as "The Anti-Baleen Movement".


We have an exclusive quote from a member of the Sea Plankton community:

"Please don't eat me!...Please!!"

Ah come on musick, save the plankton indeed. Planktons don't even know that they are alive. If we saved them, how would they know that they had been saved?

Oh the other hand, Max, you have made a convert. May High Neptune poke me with his pitchfork if I ever again use the words "Killer Whale" to describe those beautiful powerful magnificent creatures that roam the seas of the blue planet Earth.
Henceforth I shall call them "Orcas".

Now if I can only find a name for those fictional mammals that innocent little schoolkids, money-grubing film-makers, fund-raising pseudo scientists, and those feel-good, tree-hugging, better-red-than-dead, willy-freeing, naive-nouveaus who raise enough money each year to feed an african village of ten thousand, and then spend it on training little Willy for his upcoming trip to the cruel cruel sea, that call their animals "Ocras", then I'll be a happy man.

Maybe...
>-------------OCRA----------KILLER WHALE---->

YOU...ARE...RIGHT !
Sloppy reading on my part Max.
Sorry.
Milo.

There was a great deal of information (easy-to-read) on the site Max provided. One of the pages on killer whales (sorry, Max--that's what they called 'em!) described a bent dorsal fin problem of whales in captivity. I'm going to paste a little of that information here because it illustrates still another problem with wild animals in captivity:

Although bent or weakened dorsal fins are seen in the wild,
they are more common in aquarium facilities. It is particularly
noticeable in male orcas, who have narrower bases for
support than females. Scientists believe that gravity and
swimming patterns ¾ swimming in the same general circular
pattern ¾ contribute to this disorder, but there's no sign of ill
health. Another theory is that orcas in oceanariums spend
more time resting at the surface, so there is less water
pressure on either side of the fin for support. Orcas in their
natural environment, on the other hand, spend a great deal of
time beneath the surface of the water searching for food.

Baleen regards,
WWhale