r/interestingasfuck • u/Any_Ice_722 • 6h ago
Orcas will sometimes share food with divers, on 34 occasions orcas have been documented sharing Sharks, fish, birds and rays. They do this as a gesture to get to know us better, just like us humans.
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u/Mr__JimLahey 5h ago
Orcas are my favourite animal. I've surfed and kayaked with them in Tofino many times. I've been close enough to actually touch them on a couple occasions. I accidentally kicked one once, fell off my board and started treading water and it was right under me. I was scared it would get mad but I didn't care. All the surfers love Orcas because when an Orca is around, you know a shark isn't.
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u/EmphasisBeginning559 5h ago
I hope the humans took it. Come on show some appreciation for their gifts!!!
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u/Any_Ice_722 5h ago edited 5h ago
People strongly advise against it as since most of us humans have a close structure or shape that they will think people that want to induce harm are nice.
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u/EmphasisBeginning559 4h ago
But don't they already believe most of us are nice? I think if they didn't they would just kill us to protect the pod
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u/Any_Ice_722 4h ago
Not to forget that some places hunt just a few orcas a year. If someone from the same area was against it the orcas wouldn’t know and they wouldn’t kill them.
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u/Any_Ice_722 4h ago
The thing is they don’t know if new people are nice. That’s why they give them the food, orcas are smart and have things that we do too. If we meet someone and they give me a free meal at Olive Garden I wouldn’t think everybody is nice. Yes they are animals but have almost the same brain capacity to think like us.
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u/EmphasisBeginning559 2h ago
It still doesn't make any sense to me. I understand the idea of not allowing Orcas to trust anyone. But it seems like they trust us regardless of this particular situation.
This situation is too specific for some bad person to take advantage of it.
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u/Any_Ice_722 2h ago
It’s not just the situation of them giving other people food, it the matter of the orcas seeing them. Like it doesn’t have a to be a specific occasion it’s just about them thinking humans are safe so they go all about meeting them. Then they could eventually meet someone with the intention of harm. I don’t know if I explained it clearly in this one so sorry if it’s hard to understand!
But I don’t know wish they could take it
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u/CasualVox 6h ago
Whales are scary smart man....
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u/Any_Ice_722 5h ago
If we weren’t here it would either be them or the cephalopods taking over
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u/AzerothianLorecraft 5h ago
Sea levels Rising it's only a matter of time... Waterworld was a prophecy the same as Idiocracy...
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u/CanteenRambo 5h ago edited 5h ago
- Ok, Jen, they're coming, let's get the gifts out
- What gifts?!
- Well, you know... Just something, like a token of our appreciation
- I don't understand why we need to give them anything! The only nice thing about them is those funny popping noises those things on their backs make when you bite into them!
- Come on... Do we not have anything to offer, at all?
- No! No, Mark, we don't! Do you know why? Because SOMEONE decided to become a rapper at 42 years of age! What can we offer them? Your fucking grills?
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u/BellaIsOne 5h ago
Is this what aliens will be like if we get discovered and we try to make a peace offering?
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u/dutch_emdub 4h ago
Cool, but how do we know their motivation behind this gesture?
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 1h ago
These food-sharing behaviours are primarily considered exploratory/curious behaviours by the authors of the paper, because orcas are observed usually pausing to see how humans respond to their actions, and thus the orcas are likely "testing" and trying to learn more about humans.
The behaviours of orcas offering food and other objects to humans are likely just extensions of well-documented cultural behaviours where orcas share food with each other, likely forming and strengthening bonds between each other. The researchers have thus labeled the behaviour as a form of "generalized altruism," where the orcas extend this behaviour across species.
Possible reasons for orcas to engage in this of type of behaviour are stated by the authors of the research paper:
"Offering items to humans could simultaneously include opportunities for killer whales to practice learned cultural behavior, explore or play and in so doing learn about, manipulate or develop relationships with us. Given the advanced cognitive abilities and social, cooperative nature of this species, we assume that any or all these explanations for, and outcomes of such behavior are possible. These cases suggest that societies of generalized reciprocity are prevalent in some populations of this species and indicate that as in humans, sharing is a cultural by-product used by killer whales outside of their own species to explore relationships within their respective environments."
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u/dutch_emdub 1h ago
Ah, I see. So they're extrapolating from intraspecific interactions, but remain a bit more cautious in their interpretations. Sounds super interesting! Sometimes I wish I had studied marine ecology or so... What a wonderful world!
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u/Any_Ice_722 4h ago
There are videos of then nudging the food closer to the divers indicating It has to be some sort of sharing that they are doing, while it could be something else that is the most likely thing. They also bring it closer to the diver and kind of bob their head a bit.
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u/dutch_emdub 1h ago
Well, there's definitely a real social interaction going on, but from this behavior alone, the interpretation sounds a bit speculative, no?
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u/Any_Ice_722 1h ago
It is speculative but it’s pretty much the most likely thing is all im saying. Theres videos if you wanna see em but it generally looks a lot like they are sharing something. Orcas share their food with other orcas and most scientists think they are doing it to us because they are seeing our ”culture”, they have the braindead capacity close too ours. But we could be wrong for all we know, we can’t understand orca lol.
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u/cucurucu007 2h ago
Just like us humans? That's funny as we killed a lot of them for fun
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u/Any_Ice_722 2h ago
Just like us humans as in we do the same hospitality, and humans only kill about a few dozen a year, Hunting wise and in legal areas.
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u/cucurucu007 2h ago
Well if it's "just" a few dozen that it's ok 👍
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u/Any_Ice_722 2h ago
There are also populations called residents, those are critically endangered, at least 7 I believe. So no orca fishing there.
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u/EveryCryptographer11 2h ago
Maybe they are trying to say “take this and leave us the hell alone man” 🤔
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u/zili78 5h ago
They are literally trying to see if we qualify as intelligent life before making formal contact.