Traumatized Orca Teaches Her Calf to Attack Boats
Orcas – killer whales – are attacking small boats off the Iberian coast in Europe. There's been at least three apparently coordinated (!) attacks in recent weeks, and scientists believe the aggressive behavior is being taught to, or at least copied by, other pods.
Three orcas (Orcinus orca), struck a sailboat last week in the Strait of Gibraltar, piercing the boat’s rudder. "There were two smaller and one larger orca," skipper Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht. "The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side."
Two days earlier, a pod of six orcas attacked another sailboat navigating in the same area. Yachtsman Greg Blackburn told 9news that he witnessed a mother orca teaching her calf how to ram the rudder. "It was definitely some form of education, teaching going on," Blackburn said.
Photo credit: Elaine Thompson / AP
Orca assaults have occurred in the area since at least 2020 and the frequency of attacks appears to be increasing. Scientists think a single “traumatized” orca is teaching others aggressive behavior. Alfredo López Fernandez at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and his colleagues suspect a female they call White Gladis suffered trauma when she collided with a boat, an event that triggered behavioral change. "That traumatized orca is the one that started this behavior of physical contact with the boat," López Fernandez said. White Gladis began ramming other boats, and other orcas in the pod began copying her antics; the behavior then spread to other pods.
"The orcas are doing this on purpose, of course, we don't know the origin or the motivation, but defensive behavior based on trauma, as the origin of all this, gains more strength for us every day," López Fernandez told LiveScience.
The aggressive encounters are dangerous for sailors and bad for the Iberian orca subpopulation, which is listed as critically endangered by IUCN. The latest survey of the area shows there’s only three or four dozen orcas living in these waters.
Photo credit: Elaine Thompson / AP
