Not only "whales" is inappropriate according to their scientific classification, but also "killer" seems prejudicial since it inspire unwarranted fear.
> Orcas kill for sport. They push, drag, and spin around live prey, including sea turtles, seabirds, and sea lions. Some go so far as to risk beaching themselves in order to snag a baby seal—not to consume, but simply to torture it to death.
We might as well call them the assholes of the sea.
Is them attacking luxury yachts the equivalent of my cat knocking down glasses of water?
>Some go so far as to risk beaching themselves in order to snag a baby seal—not to consume, but simply to torture it to death.
This is very much housecat behavior.
It would have been simpler if the word "whale" would have been applied only to baleen whales, but unfortunately in the Old English tradition the word "whale" was used for any big marine animal, e.g. not only for sperm whales, but even for walruses.
They are apex predators. I don't think it's prejudicial to call an apex predators "killer." It's accurate.
Do you still think it's "prejudicial" after seeing how they actually behave? - https://youtube.com/watch?v=35yly16M8p4
Beyond that, it's not inaccurate to call them whales. They belong to the same family as dolphins, which are toothed whales.
And they got their name as a mistranslation into English - if I remember correctly they were originally named in Spanish as "killers of whales" or "whale killers", because they do that
metalman•5h ago
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/marine-animals...
https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/wild-orcas-offer-h...
jojobas•5h ago
https://killerwhalemuseum.com.au/old-tom/
arethuza•4h ago
zabzonk•4h ago
But to me, the interesting question is how the orcas worked out how the great whites had livers in the first place, and why they are the best bits (big bits) to eat? I hope the are not going to investigate mine, but they don't seem interested - yet. See two orcas not eating two teeny humans: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y8iipFTBanc
adrian_b•3h ago
As long as they can still obtain their chosen food, it seems that they do not have any incentives for experimenting with alternative foods, like teeny humans.
When whales, seals, penguins, sharks etc. will disappear, that might change.
zabzonk•2h ago
I can understand why (for example) big cats are scared of guys carrying AK47s (or even a pointed stick - hello, Maasai), and will run away. But the orcas really can't experience that, and don't seem scared of us at all. Lots of examples of sperm whales attacking humans (see Moby Dick) but none of orcas doing it. I know there are those yacht-bothering things off Spain.
It is strange. Unless they are going to leave us (Douglas Adams) or are just waiting to be our inheritors, which is looking more and more likely.
perrygeo•2h ago
swores•32m ago
Partly because there are animals with larger brains which we now know are not very intelligent, with no assumptions needed, and partly because some of the most intelligent non-primate animals that we know of actually have very small brains - like crows and other birds in the corvid family.
yard2010•1h ago
swores•1h ago
edit: I originally wrote out a long comment about exactly why your comment doesn't make sense to me, but after posting it I felt it was ridiculously long for its purpose, so if you want to waste time reading it you can find it here - https://pastebin.com/Y11P8ETs - but I think asking you to explain what you meant more clearly is enough for here :)
dpassens•50m ago
swores•46m ago
I think I didn't manage to see that meaning because the comment it was replying to had nothing to do with humans thinking orcas want to eat them, it was about orcas bringing food (like dead fish) to give to the humans. So more like a pet cat bringing a dead mouse to its owner than a cat in the garden fearing that the human wants to eat it?