How Do Killer Whales Hunt?
These Orcamazing creatures are not only known for their snazzy style and scrumptious menu picks, but they’ve also got a few super swell tricks up their flipper sleeves. Known for being “the wolves of the sea,” orcas are nature’s top predators, and hunt in packs, better known as pods. These pods consist of a few to 20 or more animals, and larger clans sometimes form for mating, seasonal concentration of prey, temporary social interactions; like scrabble, and Tuesday morning tennis matches.
They are highly intelligent beings, known for using coordinated hunting strategies as a team to snatch up their supper. They use strategies such as bumping, herding fish into compact areas, and slapping their tails onto the water’s surface causing waves to wash prey into their appetite arena. They also jump atop larger mammals, trapping them under the water, restricting their ability to breath, and suffocating them beneath the surface. This is what gives them their famous name “killer whale;” not because they are whales, but because they are whale killers.
Armed with a set of 50 ferocious teeth, specially adapted for ripping and tearing, orcas use these teeth as well as their entire body to take down prey as large as a blue whale, and as fierce as a great white shark. Sharkbait, Ooh Ha Ha!? Not in this ocean, Jaws.
Reaching cruising speed of up to 30 miles per hour, they can out-swim a Usain Bolt sprinting blue whale, and would be the least favorite driver among pedestrians in the neighborhood school zone.