Orcas attacking and killing sharks, even nice white sharks, off the coast of South Africa is nothing new. A yr in the past, a pair of orcas killed 17 sharks in at some point in South Africa’s Pearly Bay. Extra not too long ago, scientists have been surprised to look at video footage of a solitary orca searching, killing, and consuming the liver of a terrific white shark, in an “astonishing” assault that befell in lower than two minutes. Scientists stated it was “unprecedented” and confirmed the distinctive predatory expertise of killer whales.
“It’s attention-grabbing that it’s only one animal,” Dr Luke Rendell, marine mammal scientist, from the College of St Andrews instructed BBC Information, and the way a lot talent it demonstrates in tackling the shark – ramming it within the facet and grabbing the pectoral fin to stay away from these huge, nasty jaws.
“An awesome white shark is a pleasant, huge focus of meals, so it’s maybe unsurprising that some populations [of orcas], the place these sharks happen in ample numbers, have realized to use that.”
However why do the orcas rip out and devour the shark’s liver and go away the remainder of the carcass? In line with Ralph Watson, a marine biologist at South Africa’s Dyer Island Conservation Belief, livers make up a couple of third of sharks’ physique weight and are wealthy in a nutritious oil known as squalene, making them extremely interesting to orcas, Watson says. “Tough calculations counsel a single white shark liver may maintain a single orca for a day,” he defined to Scientific American journal.
Killer whale hunts and eats nice white shark
Due to Alaric Bond for contributing to this submit.
