#842 Is a killer whale a whale?

Is a killer whale a whale? Yes and no. Yes, because dolphins are technically whales. No, because a killer whale is a dolphin.

They are called orcas, although they are more commonly known as killer whales. A killer whale is called a whale because of its size, but it is actually a dolphin. The orca is the largest animal in the dolphin family. There are 42 different species of dolphin and they live in rivers and in the sea. The smallest dolphins are called Hector’s dolphins and they are only about 1.2 m long. They live off the coast of New Zealand and they are seriously endangered. There are only 55 of them left. Killer whales are the largest animals in the dolphin family. They can grow up to 10 m long and weigh as much as 6 tons. Orcas usually stay fairly close to the surface, but they are able to dive down to 1,000 meters if they are hunting whales or deep sea squid.

They are known as killer whales, but they are not particularly dangerous to us. They are dangerous to everything else in the ocean, which is where their name comes from. They are apex predators, which means there aren’t any animals that prey on them. They eat fish, birds, mammals, basically anything they can get. They are also known as the wolves of the sea because they hunt in packs. They work together to drive fish into a narrow area between them where they can eat them. They hunt larger animals, such as whales, in packs and they take turns biting the whale to wear it down. They have been known to kill and eat blue whales, but that takes a lot of effort, although the reward is high. They also slap their tails on the surface of the water to make a wave to wash animals like penguins and seals off the ice. They hunt and eat most kind of sharks, including great white sharks. Studies have shown that sharks flee if orcas come into their error and the sharks might not return for over a year. However, orcas don’t attack people. Outside of aquariums, there are no recorded incidences of killer whales killing people. This is compared to about 70 shark attacks every year. This is probably down to the way they hunt. Killer whales tend to chase their prey, while sharks rush at their prey from underneath. Sharks like to eat seals, but they can’t turn as fast as a seal, so they have to ambush them. They stay deep in the sea and when they see a seal splashing on the surface, they race up at it from down below. Somebody splashing around on a surfboard looks an awful lot like a seal splashing around on the surface of the water, so sharks attack them.

Now, we come to the second part of this question. A killer whale is a whale because all dolphins are actually whales. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises all belong to the Cetacea classification. Animals in this group live in the sea, are large, streamlined, and solely carnivorous. They all have a tail, and they propel themselves through the water with an up and down motion, as opposed to the side to side motion that fish use. Inside the Cetacea family, there are two subsections. These are baleen whales and toothed whales. Baleen whales are named after their baleen plate, which is a plate in their mouth covered in a keratin mesh of hairs. The whales use this mesh to sieve things like small fish and krill out of the water. They swim along with their mouths open and filter the food out of the water. There are many different types of baleen whale, but some of the largest whales, such as the blue whale, are baleen whales. Then there are toothed whales, which, as their name would suggest, have teeth. Some have more than others, but they all have teeth in some way. And found in this category are porpoises and dolphins, one of which is the killer whale. The killer whale has particularly strong teeth and jaws. The upper and lower teeth neatly fit into gaps between each other and are able to cut through flesh in a similar way to scissors. Their front teeth are slightly bent forwards so that they don’t get pulled out when their prey struggles.

So, killer whales are dolphins, which are whales. And this is what I learned today.

By Robert Pittman – NOAA (http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Quarterly/amj2005/divrptsNMML3.htm]), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1433661

Sources

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/orca

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilikum_(orca)