In November, killer whales again made headlines after sinking their fourth boat in the Strait of Gibraltar in two years. Dramaticized YouTube videos were quick to anthropomorphize the killer whales (Orcinus orca) involved in the encounters, saying the behavior was a form of vengeance for keeping the animals in captivity. Others took to social media to link the anti-capitalist movement and the orcas interacting with yachts and other luxury boats: “Eat the rich,” read one widely circulated meme depicting the orcas.

Although one study hypothesized the behavior could have been sparked by one orca’s negative encounter with a boat, most scientists familiar with killer whales suspect these highly intelligent, social and curious animals are simply engaging in a new form of play. More than 350 encounters between boats and orcas have been tallied since 2020 off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The recent incidents involve killer whales nudging the boat’s rudder, sometimes until it falls off, almost like unlocking a puzzle, said Luke Rendell, a marine mammal researcher at the University of St. Andrews. It also appears to be a behavior that is taught from one orca to the next.

Related

“It may well be that they started interacting with these things and then realized that if you hit them around enough, they give you a toy,” Rendell told Salon in a video call. “I would explain it as an expression of their natural curiosity, which has led to them developing not a new food source, but a source of toys and games.”

Technically the largest member of the dolphin family, not actually whales, killer whales are also categorized as "toothed whales." It gets a little confusing. Regardless, they are fierce apex predators at the top of the food chain with hunting tactics to match. They can drown whale calves in front of their mothers. Some types of orcas notoriously “play with their food,” with many videos documenting them tossing seals back and forth along a shoreline. Yet while they are certainly a formidable animal if you are on their menu, there have been no documented cases of a killer whale attacking or killing a human being in the wild. Humans once even cooperated with orcas to hunt whales centuries ago.

One 1937 killer whale........

© Salon