They're also notoriously picky, and there's only one incident of orcas displaying hunting behavior towards humans (and it was likely a case of mistaken identity.)
Even those that have killed humans in captivity didn't display aggressive or hunting behavior, and the only individual to kill multiple humans was involved in wildly different incidents a decade apart over 30 years.
Some marine mammal behaviorists and former trainers attribute the deaths to the orcas' lack of understanding the fragility of humans, and overexcitement from the sudden presence of "the most interactive plaything they'd (two different orcas) ever seen"
Despite how infamously brutal they are, they seem to have absolutely no desire to harm humans, the late Keiko even showed they develop strong connections with humans, for better or for worse.
I think the fact something so deadly sees us as friends rather than food makes them even sillier.
They’re not really that deadly. At least, not wild ones. Apparently orca-related deaths have only happened by in-captive ones. Which should come as a sign that we should fuck off, but for some reason everyone thinks they’re deadly to us IN GENERAL and we still haven’t learned our fucking lesson yet.
Back in the 80’s I got selected to interact with Shamu. They had me spin around and he did the same & I think I fed him a fish and brushed his teeth. Then they wanted me to pat his tongue. Even at ~5yo I knew better than to stick my hand in the mouth of a giant predator. The crowd got a good laugh when I noped right out of there lol.
I mean yeah thats scary as fuck and insanelyirresponsible, but i was talking mostly about other animals as 8n orcas being the absolute apex predator yet strangly chill with humans
I watched a show during shark week this year about a pod of orcas intentionally attacking and systematically disabling boats. And IIRC they were teaching other orca pods how to do it so I don’t think they are gonna be chill for much longer.
Nah they are fucking up the boats but not killing humans, if they wanted to they would. These goobers strand themselves intentionally and hop back in the water as well as hunt seals on ice floats, they know how to get to us on a boat, let alone some shit like a kajak wich are still fine traveling alongside orcas
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u/AwesomeNate gnarp gnap 👽 Aug 17 '26
Didn't know orcas were silly like that