Orcinology (KILLER WHALES) with Jorge Vélez-Juarbe

Punted seals. Sunken yachts. Beach ambushes. And salmon hats? What’s even happening with killer whales? Are they sadists, or just hungry hungry hippos turned marine mammals? The Natural History Museum of LA County’s marine mammal expert Dr. Jorge Vélez-Juarbe joins the show to chat about peachy babies, how their language is like a trucker radio, tiny whiskers, the formal wear, what’s with the nubbin teeth, if you should go whale watching, pod sizes, Indigenous folklore, captivity struggles, whales that meow, fatty melons and so much more. Also: baby whiskers. Spooktober continues, with these aquatic killers.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey. Okay, first up top, if you're hearing this before Thursday, October 15th at noon Eastern Standard Time, this is a quick invite to a free livestream I'm doing again Thursday, October 15th, 2026 at noon Eastern. So that's like New York time. And it is so important to have you there. I hope you can come. You may have heard that Drexel University in Philadelphia has made this devastating decision to close the Academy of Natural Sciences to the public in Philly. Imagine your local science museum, beloved for generations, just straight up closing. So, local activists, like my friend, Dr. Sarah McEnulty, you know her as the squid expert from the Toothology episode and the founder

• 0:44Alie Ward?

  of Skype a Scientist, and Karina Newsom from the Wildlife Biology episode, as well as Dr. Jessica Ware from the Dragonfly episode, plus several other Psychomers are holding a livestream on Thursday to chat about how the public can advocate for this really important museum to stay open. So, come and spend lunch with us this coming Thursday, noon Eastern Time via Zoom, and the Zoom RSVP link is in our show notes. You can also go to save-the-academy.org and go to the Events page and you can see what's going on. So, please come to that. It would be amazing to have you there. All right, see you Thursday. Oh, hey, it's the lady doing the show opening, Ally Ward. And yes, of course, obligatory, we have a whale of an episode for you. It is a killer. It's Spooktober. Let's chat

• 1:28Alie Ward?

  about the marine mammal that wants to see you dead because they are ruthless, bloodthirsty sadists. I mean, are they, though? Should we even call them killer whales? Let's get into it with the Associate Curator of Memology and Marine Mammals at my home away from home, the Natural History Museum of LA County. I love it there. So, this person got their PhD at Howard University studying the Paleobiology of Cetaceans and has worked at the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. We met up at LA's Natural History Museum a few weeks back, and he ushered me into his bone-filled

• 2:06Alie Ward?

  office with a smile. He was wearing a short-sleeved chambray blue shirt and some black, thick-framed glasses. He has one little Superman curl gracing his forehead. I had barely turned on my recorder, and it was already good.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Big jerk dolphins.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I saw you see that.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Dropping, dropping soundbites before I'm even rolling, Jorge.

• 2:36Alie Ward?

  So, we'll hear more opinions and facts in a moment, but first, thank you so much to patrons of the show who submitted questions via patreon.com/ologies and support the show for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you to everyone in Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. If you are opposed to hearing swear words in our episodes, you can always enjoy Smologies episodes, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, wherever you get podcasts. They're in their own feed you can subscribe to. They're shorter, they're kid-friendly. And of course, thanks to everyone who reviews Ologies, which keeps it up in the charts. It's helped so much, such as this one from, just left, from 101 Weasels in a Trench Coat, who wrote that "The optimal

• 3:18Alie Ward?

  measurement of distance on a road trip is not, in fact, miles or kilometers, but rather how many Ologies it takes to get there." 101 weasels in a trench coat? Pop me in the pocket. Let's go for a drive. We got a lot to cover. But first, thank you to sponsors of Ologies who make it possible for us to donate every week to a different cause. This episode is sponsored by Seed. Bloating, irregular bowel movement, gas. When your gut is off, it gets your attention. Seed's DS1 is a three-time award-winning probiotic, clinically shown to improve regularity, reduce bloating, and alleviate gas, so you can move and eat more freely. Take better care of your gut with Seed. Get 25% off with code

• 4:03Alie Ward?

  25OLOGIES at seed.com/ologies. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. We have to say that. Father Ward, you say, "There's no way you would need a career coach. You have it all together." That's a lie, and you know it. I actually hired a career coach, and without them, I wouldn't have started Ologies. It was one of the best investments I've ever made. And if you're like, "I don't know where to find a career coach," I can help you. You need an experienced pro who asks the right questions, sets you down a path where you're most likely to succeed. And that's what you can expect from a coach at today's sponsor, strawberry.me. This is so cool. They match you with a certified coach who's

• 4:44Alie Ward?

  been vetted to work closely with company founders. And yeah, sometimes I'm like, "Oh, wait, that's right, I am one." And if you're founding a business, even if you're along the way and you're maybe stuck in a rut, or you have to make a decision about expansion, or what direction you want to take your company, that's what I did. I went to strawberry.me and I was like, "Okay, can you help me pare down some stuff? I think I have too much on my plate. I'm not sure what to say yes to and what to say no to." And they were super helpful in helping me streamline, and now I get to sleep more, and I enjoy that. So, get the help every entrepreneur needs. Go to strawberry.me/ologies. That's strawberry.me/ologies. You're the boss.

• 5:23Alie Ward?

  Okay, onward. Let's talk killer whales. Scary. We can call them orcas, too. So, the name orca, it comes from the Latin for a large-bellied pot. Kind of rude. Some people call them grampus, and I'd like to bring that back. There is evidence that killer whales was accidentally flipped. They were called whale killers because killer whales do kill other whales, which then it still makes them killer whales. So, take a deep, giant, lunged breath. Let's get below their surface reputation to hear about peachy babies, how their language

• 6:03Alie Ward?

  is kind of like a trucker radio, tiny whiskers. Why the formal wear? What is with the nub and teeth? Do they actually want to eat you? Should you go whale-watching? Do they migrate or stay put? How big is a pot? How long do they live? Whales that meow. Why do some live in swimming pools? What's with the floppy fin? How much fat in whale milk, salmon hats, and sunken yachts? With mammal curator, paleobiologist, and orcaologist, Dr. Jorge Vélez Juárbe.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  My name is Jorge Vélez Juárbe.

• 7:04Alie Ward?

  Okay, great. Orcas. This is an exciting one. You don't know how long we've been waiting for this. First thing I have to ask out of the gate, orcas versus killer whales. Let's get into it.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  So, you know, all whales kill something for sustenance, for eating, for, you know, staying healthy. So, they're all killers, so to say. I guess orcas will be the more appropriate way of referring to them, because it can also translate easily to Spanish. It's orca or orcas. There's rarely any change. Again, they're all killers, even the baleen whales. We just don't see it as...

• 7:51Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's so true. So much krill and shrimp in the grill, and no one's like, "Oh, these shrimp are trembling out there."

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:01Alie Ward?

  Just a side note, this is not a blue whale episode, but for comparison, according to the 2020 paper in Nature, Baleen Whale Prey Consumption Based on High-Resolution Foraging Measurement. If for talk and body counts, blue whales, who are not toothed whales like orcas or belugas or sperm whales or dolphins, but again, a baleen whale, so blue whales filter out these tiny little shrimpy, centimeter-long krill, and they can suck up to 20 million calories a day in krill. 16 metric tons. That's 35,000 pounds in

• 8:38Alie Ward?

  one day of krill. How many krill lives lost? Millions in one day to one mouth. Blue whales, serial killers. Insatiable. And so, killer whales, a bit of a misnomer and not really fair.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not really fair.

• 8:55Alie Ward?

  Okay, good.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Not fair to all the other whales who are also killers.

• 8:59Alie Ward?

  Also killers.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  You know, they're not like orcas who decide, "Oh, we want to eat a porpoise," and they slam the porpoise over the water or turtles.

• 9:08Alie Ward?

  Seals.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Or seals.

• 9:10Alie Ward?

  Seals. They're acrobatic.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:13Alie Ward?

  They have the flair. Where do they live? I understand colder climates in the northern hemisphere, but what do I know?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Usually, but they're found throughout the oceans. For example, they're found in the Caribbean.

• 9:26Alie Ward?

  What?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there are orcas in the Caribbean. They're probably everywhere where there's food. And that's the thing with cetaceans, especially if they're on the larger end of body sizes, they're very mobile. They move around. You could still have different populations of the same species spreading in different parts of the world, but overall, they're the same species. So, in our sinus orca.

• 9:50Alie Ward?

  I thought that they were only off the coast of Vancouver and like in the Arctic and Alaska, but they really can come as far down as the Caribbean. Like, why do we associate them with colder waters? Is that where they spend more of their life?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  I think that's in part because that's where people usually go and do whale-watching for orcas, because some populations stay kind of local. So, it's if they're hanging out in some specific base, makes it easier for people to go and see them. We do get really good ideas of...

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Marine mammal distribution based on sightings or strandings. So things like strandings, when they end up dead in a, in a beach. Sounds sad, but it's something that happens.

• 10:37Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  And there are multiple reasons for it to happen. They provide a fairly accurate representation of the species that are living in a specific area.

• 10:47Alie Ward?

  So we might think that they live in the Pacific Northwest, mostly because the North Pacific Ocean has several of what's called resident pods that just don't travel around. And there are several cliques up there. There are about 700 in southern Alaska in that region. Then along the west coast of Canada, you got the northern resident whale pods totaling about 300 orcas. And then perhaps the most photographed and known are the southern resident killer whales, which are around the border between like Vancouver and Seattle and through the outer waters of the islands there. And there are three main pods.

• 11:26Alie Ward?

  There's J, K, and L with individuals named like L128, for example. They're also given indigenous names now. And there are only 74 individuals among those three pods of the southern resident killer whales. And that community is officially endangered. And Mercedes Maitland, our editor, a Canadian also, gave me the heads up that these southern resident killer whales are currently being further threatened by this port expansion to link up with this crude oil pipeline that environmentalists and activists and First Nations would not have given consent, except there was this Canada Bill C5, which kind of let that go through. So if you would like to save the whales,

• 12:11Alie Ward?

  you can make some noise for the southern residents before they become extinct. Now, overlapping with those fish-eating southern resident pods are also transient roaming populations of orcas. And those tend to prefer to eat marine mammals. And then there are the smaller offshore orcas. They're all the same species, but generally they belong to their own populations. So we got the residents, we got the transient, we got the offshore. But yeah, orcas in every ocean in the world, and they are the most widely dispersed mammal, except for humans, which have sort of infested the globe. Oops. And scientists do their best to gather a census based on sightings, and yeah, strandings on beaches.

• 12:56Alie Ward?

  And that can happen when a whale is sick or dying, or when they're doing what's called an amphibious ambush of a land mammal, and then they get stuck, or when they get lost and they can't get back out. Sometimes there are mass strandings of orcas because a whale heads to the beach and the pod just follows them. But yeah, we have those resident stay putters, the transient roamers, and the ultra road tripping offshore orcas.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  So some orcas have kind of stay local, while there's others that migrate between different areas. And we have other species of whales that do migrations. For example, gray whales migrate south every winter to give birth in Baja California.

• 13:41Alie Ward?

  All the way down here.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, this is a gray whale highway just off the coast of California. They're coming up and down.

• 13:48Alie Ward?

  Gray whales, who cares? What's that got to do with orcas?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  I come back to orcas being killers. For now, orcas don't seem to have figured out where there's tons of new tender baby gray whales in these areas. Because I think when they figure it out, it's not gonna be great for the gray whales.

• 14:07Alie Ward?

  Pretty snacky.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah. And let's say a gray whale is having contractions and about to birth a child the size of a Prius. The perfect maternity ward is off of Baja California in Mexico. It's called San Ignacio Lagoon. And the entrance to the lagoon is like a really annoying driveway. And the waters are shallow, so orcas are kind of foiled since they're like, how do we even get in here? And they tend to hunt in packs, so they'll often use the advantage of depth to kind of sneak up and attack. However, a few orcas did crack the code, and they got in there a few years back. They ate a dolphin, kind of made some headlines.

• 14:48Alie Ward?

  But in general, the tasty gray babies have been safe from orcas for several million years there. When was the first time that you saw an orca? Because I've never seen one. And do you remember? Or do you remember like how you got introduced to them?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Well, I knew about orcas because I've always liked natural history. And then Free Willy came out when I was, I guess I was a teenager, so I don't like Free Willy.

• 15:17Alie Ward?

  You don't like Free Willy? Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. I've never seen it, but some people hold it dear.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  It takes a special friend.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Willie doesn't have a problem with it.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  We appreciate each other.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  Looks like Willie's got himself a soulmate.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  To set you free. Warner Brothers proudly presents.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  That's Free Willy. He's got family out there. I heard him.

• 15:41Alie Ward?

  So this film was released in 1993, and I watched the trailer on YouTube. And the top comment read, "I remember after I watched this movie as a kid, I imitated the orca's high pitched voice nonstop until my father came and slapped me." I'm 38 now. So it was divisive on a lot of levels. It's about a whale in captivity who gets released.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:07Alie Ward?

  Yeah, but that can't really happen.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Nah, not successfully.

• 16:11Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  It, they tried with Keiko was the orca that they used, if I remember correctly.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  And yeah, it's like, once they go back in captivity, or if they're born into captivity, they can't really go back to being in the wild.

• 16:27Alie Ward?

  So, okay. Keiko played Willie.

• 16:31Alie Ward?

  And despite animal ethicists saying that orcas have personhood because they make decisions and they control their lives, Keiko was not nominated for an Academy Award, which is a bummer, because I can imagine him right in the audience, front row at the Oscars, nude, because he was born in a tux. But he lived outside of Hollywood at an amusement park in Mexico City. And obviously, after the movie, everyone was like, "You've got to free the actor who portrayed Willie in Free Willy." Like, come on, man. So they flew Keiko by plane, I'm thinking first class, to Oregon. They rehabbed him, they got him ready. Then he hopped another flight. I mean, talk about a transient orca. Am I right?

• 17:15Alie Ward?

  To Iceland, where he had been kidnapped 20 years before. He was finally released in 2002. This is almost a decade after Free Willy.

• 17:29Alie Ward?

  And he linked up with a pod. They went to Norway. There he saw some humans, and he was like, "Hey, my buddies." Because he had lived in isolation from orcas for so long. Humans were what he reacted to most. And he had trouble adjusting. And Keiko died barely a year after this hard fought release. And since history has a tendency to repeat, and Hollywood only banks on the remakes, there is indeed another newer version of Free Willy reimagined coming to the screen. Will it be a drama? I think so. Will it be called, "Well, Willie's cooked"? Either way.

• 18:13Alie Ward?

  Hopefully not, because I did read that they're not using any actual whales. It's just CGI. So, I don't know. Even captive orca whale actors can't seem to find a gig these days. But speaking of real life orcas and depression.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  First time I saw a real life orca, I think it was 2009, I went to SeaWorld San Diego.

• 18:37Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  I was in California. So I came here to California for a meeting that's held about every four years, where we meet for about a week and we present each other's work and talk about whales and stuff. So one of the days in between the meeting, we'd talk to colleagues to SeaWorld San Diego. That was the first time I saw orcas. And my first thought is like, this is sad. This is pretty sad. Their space is small. The orca was just like swimming in circles.

• 19:10Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  I was like, this is not right.

• 19:12Alie Ward?

  Yeah. I remember too. When Blackfish came out and I think Tillum or Tilik, there was one whale, but in particular. Tilik, um, thank you. But their fins getting floppy.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:24Alie Ward?

  Do they know what is going on with that?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  I thought at the time it's like, oh, they're just because they're swimming in circles in the same direction. I don't know if that's the reason. But yeah, that's not a sign of a healthy orca. If the fin is floppy, it flops to one side or the other.

• 19:41Alie Ward?

  So why the floppy fin? Well, they're in prison, so things are gonna go wrong. And it can be from a breakdown of collagen, from air exposure, from the warm air. It can be from just swimming in circles because they have not nearly enough space. I mean, imagine being confined to something the size of like a king sized bed. That's your entire life while someone forced you to do tricks in order to get fed. I mean, the parking lots at these attractions are up to 100 times larger than the tanks for the orcas who live in conditions so far from their natural habitat. It's a shock that they're even in water. And while some orcas are bred in captivity, one of the most infamous incidents of their capture

• 20:25Alie Ward?

  was in 1970, when the southern resident killer whale population was effectively attacked by humans in West Cove in Washington State, and more than 80 whales were abducted. Nearly a dozen were killed in the process, and this was for captive entertainment by places like SeaWorld and Marineland. So every day, I can't help but think of like how weird it is to live in the future's past. Like so many people would be like, wait, people did that? That's so fucked up. And you're like, well, yeah. And if you do wanna see an orca, but you don't want to see one who has either been abducted or bred for it, can you just go anywhere? Did Jorge see them growing up?

• 21:09Alie Ward?

  And where are you from originally?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  I'm originally from Puerto Rico.

• 21:13Alie Ward?

  I was gonna say, cause there's something that's behind you that says Puerto Rico.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:18Alie Ward?

  That was my, that was my first tip. Are there orcas that go that far south?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Yes, there are orcas around the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico. And I know colleagues who work there.

• 21:31Alie Ward?

  But they do possibly come that far down?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they definitely occur.

• 21:36Alie Ward?

  I would have lost that round in a trivia show so hard. I did not comprehend that they were so. And in the southern hemisphere too?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. My wife was doing fieldwork in Antarctica, and she saw orcas.

• 21:52Alie Ward?

  What kind of fieldwork does she do?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  She's a marine biologist, so she was leading a team of divers to collect all sorts of marine invertebrates and bring them back into the collection.

• 22:04Alie Ward?

  Do you guys just talk sea life all the time?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Often, also that our kids know very well what we do.

• 22:12Alie Ward?

  What does fieldwork tend to look like for you?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  It's the most fun part of it. So fieldwork for me is going to remote places to look for fossils of animals that lived millions of years ago and that no one else has seen before. You know, so whenever I find the remains of any kind of organism, I am literally the first human that's seen the remains of something that was alive way before humans existed. So for me, it's always exciting. Totally so if I find something that I know immediately represents a new species, like, oh, yes, this is. I get to work on this and eventually name it. But it's an immediate excitement. And it's the, for me, it's a thrill of discovery.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Whether it's a tiny piece of bone or something bigger, it's that thrill of discovery. It doesn't have any parallel to anything else.

• 23:08Alie Ward?

  It's gotta feel like your birthday every time you find something, like the best present in the world, you know? And speaking of the fossil record and the evolution of it, you mentioned something about porpoises that are jerks. And can we disambiguate? What is a cetacean? What is a porpoise? They're a toothed whale.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:28Alie Ward?

  Right? So there's toothed whales, there's baleen whales.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:31Alie Ward?

  Really different types of hunting.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  So they're all cetaceans.

• 23:34Alie Ward?

  They're all cetaceans.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:35Alie Ward?

  So cetaceans are fully water dwelling, fish-like creatures who are mammals, and they include whales, which are subdivided into the baleen filter feeders, like gray whales and humpbacks, and the toothed ones, like orcas and belugas and sperm whales. Now, a toothed whale is also dolphins, and they include porpoises, which are not dolphins. And we have a Dolphinology two-part episode with the charming and hilarious Dr. Justin Gregg, who explains all of that. But the long and short of it, I'm gonna quote a listener, an orca researcher and science communicator, Emma Luck, AKA Northern Naturalist Online, asked us in all caps to pass on,

• 24:20Alie Ward?

  "Please explain to everyone that killer whales are both whales and dolphins, and that all dolphins are just toothed whales." And Dr. Gregg, in the Dolphinology episode, agreed and said that, yes, those words dolphins, whales, they're all useless. I hate them all. He says, "I hate the word whale and dolphin." So we call killer whales whales. We also call them orcas. They're actually a dolphin species. And then you have pilot whales. Guess what? Also a dolphin. He told me melon headed whale, also a dolphin. And then you can also use the word dolphin to apply to porpoises sometimes, not dolphins. And people use it to talk about the dolphin fish, which is a fish. It's a mess.

• 25:02Alie Ward?

  So if you hear oceanic dolphin, that might be an orca. Got it. And is an orca a dolphin?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yes, orcas are dolphins, are big, mean dolphins, I will say. And then there's within the same group that includes dolphins, there are other, you know, subgroups or sub families or families. One of those are the porpoises, and porpoises tend to be small. Think of Akita, which is the smallest living cetacean. It's a small porpoise that lives in the northern part of the Sea of Cortez. It's the world's most endangered cetacean. Maybe about 30 or less remain.

• 25:43Alie Ward?

  Yeah, there is a porpoise called a Akita, and there are fewer of them in the world than there are touring members of the band Arcade Fire. There's 10. Arcade Fire has 12.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  So they're kind of snack size for something big, like an orca.

• 25:59Alie Ward?

  Snacks. But an orca is a big dolphin?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Orcas are just, yeah, orcas are, they're nine meter long dolphins. They're big. They're the biggest of all dolphins, although not the biggest of all toothed whales.

• 26:12Alie Ward?

  What's the bigger toothed whale, sperm whale?

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Sperm whales.

• 26:14Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:15Alie Ward?

  And then, okay, so nine meters, so they're like 25, 30 feet. What is that in comparison, like a bus? Is it about that long?

• 26:24Speaker 02

  I think that's.

• 26:24Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Fairly appropriate.

• 26:26Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  So they're big.

• 26:28Alie Ward?

  And as I mentioned, through April 2027, the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, one of my favorite places has an orca exhibit. And so I walked through after this interview just to get a gander, to chill. And there are these huge fiberglass models of a few real life orcas. They're suspended from the ceiling so you can kind of walk in the shadow of them. And you can pretend you're a terrified fish or a seal. Here's what it looked like. I would say this is like the size of a bus, which is so cool. Oh, my God. From the tip of the fin to the bottom of the belly, I would say that's easily like 10, 11 feet.

• 27:14Alie Ward?

  Their fins are like the size of a coffee table. And like going to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and looking at celebrity likenesses, there was information about the famous whales, well, the oceanic dolphins, that were gawking at, and it read Scarlett, AKA J50, was the miraculous baby of the southern residents. Scientists thought that her mother, Slick, J16, was too old to give birth, perhaps because of Slick's age. But Scarlett's birth was problematic, and Slick needed help from the other orcas to deliver her baby, and they gently used their teeth to pull Scarlett from her mother.

• 27:58Alie Ward?

  So Scarlett's name was chosen because her skin was scarred by the sharp teeth of the orca midwives. And the females don't have boobs, per se, but they have mammary slits, which are located on either side of their genitals. So calves nudge them, kind of like a drunk man slapping the bar for another whiskey, and then she contracts a muscle and squirts in their mouth. But speaking of ages.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  When they first show up in the fossil record, about 3.5 million years ago, they were about half the size.

• 28:32Alie Ward?

  They were about. Half their size?

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, half their size. But they're already eating lots of fish, which some groups of orcas do, as evidenced by the tooth wear. So as Penny thought, we're not only discovering

• 28:47Speaker 02

  extinct species, we're also trying to use newer technology to understand extinct species that have been known for a long time.

• 28:57Alie Ward?

  Well, when it comes to their history, they were in the sea. They came up on land. They said, I'm over it. And then they went back in the sea. And that is how they are marine mammals. What happened there? They're related to kind of deer?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:18Alie Ward?

  How?

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Some of the closest relatives are pigs and hippos. The closest ones, pigs and hippos, yes. I know, they don't, they don't look anything like.

• 29:28Alie Ward?

  Well, yeah, legs. I mean, like, where'd those go? Those turned into fins? And then do they have back leg nubbins?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  They went from land terrestrial organisms to completely seafaring animals in about 15 million years.

• 29:47Alie Ward?

  That's not too bad.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  It's low compared to other animals.

• 29:50Alie Ward?

  OK.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  There's a pretty good fossil record that document this transition from land to water in cetaceans. And it's all about food, if you ask me. They're exploring other places to find food or to fill in ecological spaces that were left empty by the extinction of marine reptiles that were much more common during the age of dinosaurs.

• 30:14Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  So they're taking the opportunity and just going in, going for it. The front limbs eventually turned into fins. The hind limbs were eventually lost. And there's, there's some really cool transitional fossils that document how the hind limbs are getting like shrunk, shrunk, shrunk. Some of the earliest fully aquatic whales have tiny, dinky legs.

• 30:39Alie Ward?

  Like a T-Rex in reverse?

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Which are eventually completely lost. There's still a vestigial pelvis. So there's a little bit of bone that represents the pelvis, but it's almost, almost gone.

• 30:55Alie Ward?

  And according to this N H M exhibit, the first whales lived on land about 50 million years ago. And then during this like 12 million year glow up process, whales went into the water. Their hind legs shrunk. Their tails grew long and powerful. And their nostrils became blowholes. Then they split into two groups we know today. The tooth whales, like orcas, they kept the sharp teeth of their ancestors. And then the blue whales lost their teeth and they became filter feeders. But evolution does not stop. It's just too slow for us tiny little humans to witness on this grand water, back to land, back to water scale.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  So the work never ends, so to say.

• 31:41Alie Ward?

  Well, OK, how big are their teeth? Because from afar, they look like these spaced out little nubbins. But again, like, they're pretty far. Are they like the size of your thumb or the size of your longer finger? Like, do?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  I would say they're, they're closer to size, like, maybe half a banana.

• 31:59Alie Ward?

  Half a banana? And are they sharp?

• 32:02Speaker 02

  They're, they're pointy. They're kind of blunt. But when their force, their bite force is exerted, they, they do some damage. They're, so they're not sharp like what you would expect from like a shark tooth that will have to an edge or they will be flattened. They're conical. They're more like a pointed cone. Depending on their, on their diets, they wear down in different ways.

• 32:29Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  So if it's eating a lot of fish or eating a lot of shark, the tips, they start wearing down.

• 32:35Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Some groups of orcas tend to prefer eating finnepeds or other marine mammals.

• 32:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I was curious about that because if I were eating some slippery salmon, I feel like it would go straight. And I'm an orca. I feel like it would go straight down the hatch. But if I'm eating a seal, I feel like there's got to be crunchy crunch. And so how does the same species handle such different prey?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  There is a very good question. I think it's probably preferences that have arise within populations related to availability of those preys.

• 33:10Alie Ward?

  Hmm.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  They're still biting, although as, kind of like I said, general rule, cetaceans have terrible table manners. They, they barely chew their food. So they're, they're raptorial feeders. So they're, they're just like, kind of bite and then swallow.

• 33:26Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  If it's a big enough prey, their teeth shrinks off and then swallow. What if they're eating fish? It's like, oh, bite and swallow.

• 33:35Alie Ward?

  Bite and swallow.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Others are what we call suction feeders.

• 33:39Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  They kind of creep up to their prey and open their mouths, create a vacuum, and they slurp their prey in.

• 33:45Alie Ward?

  Like noodles.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:47Alie Ward?

  Like ramen. Well, so many people need to know salmon hats. What I understand is like 35 years ago, there were orcas observed off the coast of the Pacific Northwest who were balancing dead salmon on their heads. And no one knew why. Time went on, nobody saw it. And then the last couple of years, I think because we slipped into a simulation, who knows? The salmon hats are back, right? I think the teenagers are doing it. Can you explain what is happening with this?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  It's Gen C trends.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  So that's the thing about cetaceans as a whole. They're very smart. We've heard stories about, or we've heard people say, oh, they're very smart. So there's many things that we don't understand about them. Because in some ways, there's some aspects of their biology are more easy to study than others.

• 34:47Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  So I don't know what's going on with the salmon hats.

• 34:51Alie Ward?

  And Jorge is not alone. A lot of researchers are left scratching their salmon free heads about this Western North American behavior. But there are theories. So either it's just play and mimicking each other, like a TikTok trend. But it also could be a signal to the other pod members that they've found a good hunting spot, kind of like a visual dinner bell. Also, if the orcas are having a hard time hunting, they've been observed ripping prey in half to share with family. So they will share their fish stick. And so they are killers by necessity, but they seem to be socialists by choice. I like that. Now, some other hypotheses are that this salmon wearing behavior,

• 35:36Alie Ward?

  which was observed back in 1987 and then pretty much disappeared from our observations until the fall of 2024. They think it could point to like rare bumper crops of salmon, in which case the orcas may just be celebrating by being like, like Scrooge McDuck jumping in a pool full of coins. Just like, look at all this abundance. Now, Andrew Tritz, who works with University of British Columbia's Marine Mammal Research Unit, had kind of a bit of a shrug in terms of a very obvious reason. But he did tell the BBC that if these orcas are playing with their food, it might suggest that they have full bellies and that they have some free time on their hands. Other whale researchers have noted kind of with a sigh

• 36:21Alie Ward?

  that salmon hats are a time for rejoicing because, quote, "tragically, getting enough food is rare for southern resident killer whales."

• 36:30Speaker 02

  There's also some dolphins that have been documented using pufferfish to get high.

• 36:36Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  So they, they, yeah.

• 36:39Alie Ward?

  Get crazy out there.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  They do all sorts of weird things. I think we'll, we'll be discovering more behavioral curiosities as people dive more or record more or document things in different ways. There's just no end to what to expect for them.

• 37:02Alie Ward?

  What is their cognitive capacity like? Are they remembering each other's names? Are they hunting in ways that are strategic? Do they remember faces? Like, what are they dealing with up in the dome?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  They definitely have the capacity of learning strategies for hunting food and passing those generationally.

• 37:27Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Something very similar happens to how they communicate with each other.

• 37:32Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  So there are generalized ways that they communicate. But then there are, so to say, regionalisms within different pods. So much so that if we put together pods from different areas, it may be hard for them to communicate.

• 37:50Alie Ward?

  Ah.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Just like if we were going to some other country and we don't speak the language, it may be hard for us.

• 37:57Alie Ward?

  Do they have language?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say yes. From what we understand, there are languages, you know, including within different pods. The way they communicate and the way they hear sound underwater, it's another aspect that, to me, is very interesting.

• 38:16Alie Ward?

  And orcas make these echolocation clicks. But we can eavesdrop on some orca talk from the southern resident killer whale pod whose calls the researchers have been able to capture because, again, they're residents there, so they're easier to study. And they've put hydrophones in the waters. And one J pod call, according to orcabehaviourinstitute.org, is described as sounding like a sheep or a goat. And again, this is from J pod.

• 38:49Alie Ward?

  Well, the K pod call sounds totally different, like a mewing kitten.

• 39:04Alie Ward?

  The L pod has, again, totally different call. Sounds to me like an irritated parrot asking someone a question for like the third time.

• 39:24Alie Ward?

  And I know that last one was like, pretty high pitched. But imagine if you were at like, a concert and you lost your friends and then you heard one of them screeching in the distance. Honestly, more effective than a text with a pin drop. Do they have ears?

• 39:40Speaker 02

  So.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  So, the external ear, or the hole where the external ear will be, it's plugged.

• 39:49Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not functional. And this is, one of the things that gets a little bit crazy, they hear through their lower jaws.

• 39:56Alie Ward?

  Through their lower jaws?

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:58Alie Ward?

  Like bone conducting?

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Bone conducting.

• 40:00Alie Ward?

  Headphones?

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, kind of like that. And also, when they're making the sounds to communicate or to get to know their environment, their echolocation, the sounds are not coming from vocal cords. They're coming from a special structure located near the nostril, called the phonic lips. And it literally looks like a pair of lips embedded within their foreheads, within the fleshy part of the foreheads.

• 40:31Alie Ward?

  What? Like, near their blowhole?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very, um, off-putting, weird.

• 40:38Alie Ward?

  A mouth in your nose, at the top of your head. Science fiction aliens could never.

• 40:47Alie Ward?

  Is it part of their blowhole? Or is it separate?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  They're connected, so.

• 40:50Alie Ward?

  It's connected, they got a mouth in there.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  They're kind of connected because there's a series of air sacs around their blowhole, where they store air. And the air sacs are connected to the blowhole and also to the phonic lips. So when they're doing clicks and whistles and noises and whatever sound they need to make, they're passing air through those phonic lips and making those sounds.

• 41:15Alie Ward?

  Are they opening their mouths as they do it?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:18Alie Ward?

  Or no, they're just doing it from up top?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  From up top. And so the sound, it emanates from the phonic lips, which are adjacent to the melon, which is this fatty, soft tissue structure that kind of works as an amplifier. And the melon sits kind of in front of the blowhole, kind of like in the top of the snout. And it's surrounded by muscles, almost all around. So the sound waves are kind of channel through there and they go out into the environment. So if you remember like, the old time Aquaman cartoons?

• 41:55Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  When Aquaman would communicate with the sea life and you see the sound waves coming from his forehead.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  That's how I like to imagine it. That's my analogy.

• 42:08Alie Ward?

  Off this melon, too.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, through the melon. So, so sound is produced that way, goes out into the environment, it bounces off whatever's in front of them. And it comes back. All the while, they're moving, so they're swimming. And the sound, it's picked up through their lower jaws. So it goes from water, through flesh, through bone. The back end of their lower jaws is very thin bone. And there's a fat pad on the inside that is adjacent to the ear bones. It goes from water, through flesh, across the mandible, to the back end, through the fat pad, to the ear bone. And then it kind of goes up.

• 42:55Alie Ward?

  Without even dealing with the external ear?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:58Alie Ward?

  At all?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, they're bizarre.

• 43:01Alie Ward?

  And yeah, that big old brain in the front of toothed whales' heads, meaning they're super smart, well, that's not what that is. It's just good optics. Don't believe everything you see. That's not the orca brain under there. It's called the melon. And this is big bulb of fat and wax researchers think helps them hear better. But it looks amazing. And if killer whales ever make it back to land, perhaps one day they're gonna want to invest in a BML, a Brazilian melon lift, caked up noggins. What kind of lungs we dealing with? Because I picture them gigantic, like the size of me.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they have very large lung capacity. Some species of whales are a deep diver going down hundreds of meters to find food.

• 43:49Alie Ward?

  Hundreds of meters?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Echolocation probably evolved as a way of finding food in the dark. So, not necessarily deep diving, but in the evening, there are deep water species of fishes and squids that swim up to the surface as it's getting dark. And that's free food. It's not free food, it's easy to catch.

• 44:16Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  But you need to see them. So echolocation may have evolved as a way of seeing in the dark. And expanding their food-acquiring horizons, expanding their palates. In a way.

• 44:31Alie Ward?

  And orcas can hold a breath, a single breath, for typically about 15 minutes. And some new research found that they come to the surface to breathe once in between dives. Also, they sleep in cat naps. Just one half of their brain is awake to make sure that they're breathing regularly and just to, I don't know, keep tabs on things. But Dr. Beth Volpav, who co-authored the 2024 paper Killer Whale Respiration Rates, explained in an article that it's like humans retaining one breath for an hour. And it put it in terms like, it's the equivalent of holding your breath, running to the grocery store, shopping, and coming back before breathing again.

• 45:13Alie Ward?

  Our skin would turn blue and we would be dead if we tried that. Speaking of. What does their skin feel like? Because I feel like it looks like a slip and slide. It looks like a wet tarp. But what?

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:26Alie Ward?

  Kind of, yeah?

• 45:27Speaker 02

  It's soft. The young ones will have a little bit of whiskers as well. So you can see some of their mammalian traits are still there.

• 45:36Alie Ward?

  So baby orcas can look orange or peachy where their white spots are because they haven't yet feasted on the 40% fat milk of their mom. So their blubber stores are thin, they haven't built them up yet. But apart from this like sunset-colored skin, baby orcas also have, yes, vibrancy, which are temporary whiskers. They look like delicate, wispy little dashes around the blowhole and kind of where a mustache would be. So it's like if you burst a giant, orange Timothy Chalamet. Just precious.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I know gray whales have it because I've seen any baby gray whales, like, oh. I did not know this.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  That was thanks to, that was thanks, thanks to John Graywell that stranded in 2020 and it was brought to our off-site facility.

• 46:34Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I've heard about this off-site facility. I heard it's got a tin roof and in the summer it gets a little toasty in there.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:41Alie Ward?

  A little stinky and exciting.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  You get used to it, like, you know, 15 minutes if you're in there, you don't feel, you don't smell anything.

• 46:50Alie Ward?

  Real quick, we're gonna dip into some stinky water with a quick bite from our functional morphology episode with a comparative anatomist, Dr. Joy Reidenberg, who does whale autopsies for a living and whom I love. How did you get, because I mean, I've seen these videos of you scaling whales. I mean, the most badass you've ever seen. There's a whale on a beach, there are like 100 spectators, and there's you in full yellow slickers with like a machete, scaling it like a tiny mountain and just cutting it open and like blubbers everywhere. I would like to play you a clip from Inside Nature's Giants, wherein Dr. Reidenberg

• 47:29Alie Ward?

  has arrived on a beach in the pre-dawn dead of night to lead a whale dissection. And as she carves into the abdomen with something that appears to be a chef's knife.

• 47:41Speaker 06

  It's really, really fresh.

• 47:44Speaker 06

  I don't smell anything. It's like, it's like walking down the butcher's aisle in the supermarket. All the meat's really fresh here. This animal, I think, is only around 24 hours dead.

• 48:00Speaker 06

  So we gotta wipe, give my face a wipe down around my lips.

• 48:09Speaker 06

  The most dangerous thing is if you get it in your eyes or in your mouth. And so, I know enough to keep my mouth shut, but. Probably poked one of the intestines. And that was just all the gas in the intestines just sprayed me in the face.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Ah, sorry.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Be better in than out.

• 48:31Alie Ward?

  The whale intestine has released a death fart into her face. And not only does she remain composed and professional, but jovial. What does it smell like?

• 48:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, first of all, it's a really good thing that smell-a-vision hasn't been invented yet.

• 48:49Speaker 07

  Because I think most people would turn the show off.

• 48:51Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 07

  Because the smell is really bad. I mean, just imagine you've got 65 feet of rotting flesh, you know? You know how bad milk smells when it goes bad?

• 48:59Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 07

  Now imagine you've got 65 feet of quarts of milk hanging out there, right? So it's a, it's a pretty bad smell when it's rotten. But like most things, you get in your to it after a while. Like if you put on perfume, maybe an hour later, you don't even smell it anymore. But if someone else walks into the room for the first time, they smell it, right?

• 49:18Alie Ward?

  I just looked this up and it's called olfactory fatigue or olfactory adaptation. And our scent receptors essentially are just over it. They're like, I'm looking for danger or food. And if I haven't eaten this or been killed by it, forget about it. I don't care. The stench is like so five minutes ago.

• 49:39Speaker 07

  Well, that's what's like at a whale stranding. After the first hour, you don't smell anymore, but everybody who comes to visit smells it. And when you leave that stranding, everybody that you see smells it on you.

• 49:49Alie Ward?

  Right.

• 49:50Speaker 07

  No matter how many showers you take.

• 49:51Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 49:52Speaker 07

  Because the oil gets under your skin, even when you're wearing latex gloves, it still gets under all that. And there's an aura about it. It's, you know, like when you're around someone who smokes cigarettes and your hair smells, okay, it's the same thing. Your hair is going to smell, your skin is going to smell, your clothing, if it, even if it was just in the vicinity is going to smell.

• 50:10Alie Ward?

  What do you do? Is there like a special soap that you're like this, like this linseed?

• 50:15Speaker 07

  You just have to wait for it to volatilize out.

• 50:20Speaker 07

  Because, I mean, you can wash off the snotty stuff that's stuck on your skin. Yes, that you can do. You can get rid of the oil that's on the outside, but you can't get rid of the oil that's moved into your skin.

• 50:30Alie Ward?

  That's a good point.

• 50:31Speaker 07

  You know, it's, it's now part of you. You just have to wait for it to evaporate off.

• 50:34Alie Ward?

  So, boy, howdy. I have not yet been to the Natural History Museum of LA County's research storage facility. But if and when I do, I know I'm going to be changed forever. It's fine. You've got to keep them somewhere, just a big garage of whale chunks.

• 50:51Speaker 07

  I know.

• 50:52Alie Ward?

  I mean, dream to me, actually. That sounds like going to an antique mall on a Saturday. It just sounds like, let me in there. I want to see it.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Between the specimens we have there, which are mostly skeletons, um, we also have a relatively large collection of fetuses. But it's mostly skeletons of cetaceans and other marine mammals. And our fossil collection, we have one of the largest collections in the world. So as a total, it's, it's huge.

• 51:23Alie Ward?

  I'm looking at a picture here and it's just like going to a Costco for whale bones. And just, everyone is, looks tiny surrounded. And I see that some of you are wearing masks in there. Is that because of the pandemic or is that because of the stench? That's the stench.

• 51:44Alie Ward?

  I get it.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  The first time I went there, I noticed the smell. And then the first time I went to a stranding, I noticed it's a special smell.

• 51:53Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It's.

• 51:55Alie Ward?

  Sure.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  It's, it can almost, almost be a sweet smell.

• 52:00Alie Ward?

  Almost?

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Almost. If they're not too rotten, I guess.

• 52:04Alie Ward?

  But you know what? This is sweetening your heart.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:08Alie Ward?

  Speaking of the opposite of that, let's talk a little bit about their prey drive and playing with their food. I think we've seen clips of David Attenborough narrating over seals being punted in the air.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:25Alie Ward?

  Okay, I was wrong. I did not see David Attenborough talking about this, but it was a whale watching tour who filmed this in 2015. And I would play you clips of the two guys who saw this, like literally hooting, hollering, chanting, yes, yes, yes, yes. And quote, "That seal went 80 feet up in the air." But, uh, they had this like expensive and scary licensing fee. So we're just going to link the video on our website. But indeed, you can watch some guys watch whales absolutely launching seals like a medieval train boucher.

• 53:05Alie Ward?

  Imagine if you didn't have legs, but you're underwater hacky-sacking something the size of a sleeping bag, but filled with butter. Eight stories in the air. Like rag dolls and then maybe they eat them, maybe they don't. Where does this sense of we'll call it play come from? Or do they know?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  They're very smart. So they do all these things that normally we will associate with human behavior. But probably because we see it ourselves, you know, cats also kind of play with their food.

• 53:39Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  It's not that surprising that orcas will do it as well, or they just play with their food or potential food. Maybe it's just a way of killing them.

• 53:49Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  For consumption. But yeah, it's one of those interesting things of their behavior that maybe we don't fully understand yet, but maybe someday we will.

• 54:02Alie Ward?

  Although one scientist from University of London did tell Newsweek that since seals and sea lions, and for that distinction between them, you can listen to our pinipetology episode. Since these marine mammals have claws and teeth, kicking them around first may be a way to avoid injury to the orca at least. So they need to. Wait, actually, according to a 2023 study published once again in Marine Mammal Science titled Harassment and Killing of Porpoises by Fish- Eating Southern Resident Killer Whales. Orcas in that southern resident population have been observed harassing and then killing porpoises without even eating them.

• 54:47Alie Ward?

  So the researchers hypothesized this could be for hunting practice, uh, fun, or maybe an attempt to mother the porpoises. Like playing dolls, but once again, reducing them to rag dolls with a torn off head. Now, in terms of that last sad one, have killer whales hired a high-profile attorney masquerading as an orca biologist? The jury is out. Have you ever been to Benihana? Like a yakitori thing where they're chopping up on a big plancha?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 55:20Alie Ward?

  And sometimes they'll toss a shrimp in someone's mouth? Is it any different? Not really.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  No, not really, no, no.

• 55:28Alie Ward?

  You have seafood corpse and you're tossing it around for absolutely no reason, you know?

• 55:34Speaker 02

  There you go. You see, the stuff we do, we normally associate with humans, we are animals.

• 55:39Alie Ward?

  We're animals. If we're going to do some finger pointing, they can do some fin pointing right back at us because some of us are. Although there is some behavior that other people might, one person's cruelty is another's mischief. Just a fun fact, the owner of Benihana, his son is none other than DJ Steve Aoki. Also, once someone sued Benihana for millions of dollars because a chef kept trying to get a guy to catch a shrimp, but he, um, couldn't. And he got a kink in his neck and then through some medical mishaps that did not seem that Benihana related. He ended up dying, uh, from like a later surgery. But the judge was like, you know, leave the shrimp launching out of this unrelated.

• 56:24Alie Ward?

  So I think the shrimp launching continues. Now, in terms of gladiatorial behavior, another killer whale spectator sport is. But what is going on with the sinking of the yachts? I think off the coast of Portugal, where from what I understand, like a grandma whale is like, check this out. And now it's becoming generational?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Yes. There was some observations that came out recently about this. They're not really trying to sink boats. It's more of a playful thing.

• 56:56Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Uh, it's happening in the Mediterranean region. I was in southern Spain in the summer and some of our friends were, actually went on a yacht and they, they, at some point they were surrounded by orcas. Later on, their boat was not working.

• 57:14Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  They don't really, they don't really know if it was because of the orcas, because of the other things that were faulty in the boat.

• 57:22Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  There's that possibility. It's some playful behavior and that unfortunately it seems to be doing some damage.

• 57:33Alie Ward?

  How do we know it's playful and not like a big buck you to the boats, you know? Because especially if the boats are loud or they're scaring away fish. I imagine the ocean is so much louder than what they evolved to deal with, even though they have bone conducting jaws. But how do we know that they're not like?

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Or maybe, maybe you want to think it is playful behavior.

• 57:54Alie Ward?

  But would they eat the rich? Do they like the taste of humans?

• 57:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 57:59Alie Ward?

  They don't like the taste of humans?

• 58:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 58:00Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  It's a, we're not, they're normal prey. Yeah. They wouldn't go out purposely to eat humans when there are so many fish and seals in the ocean.

• 58:12Alie Ward?

  Porpoises?

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Porpoises.

• 58:14Alie Ward?

  So yes, if you need a relaxing beach read, you can crack open the 2024 Scientific American article titled Orcas Just Sank Another Yacht. Orcas have once again attacked and sunk a boat near the Strait of Gibraltar, a behavior that has scientists stumped. And it opens with the line. The orcas are at it again. And it explains that since the year 2020, there have been a series of over 500 attacks around the Strait of Gibraltar between southern Spain and Morocco. And a very splashy 2024 New York Post headline read, "Killer whales sink $128,000 yacht in a terrifying two-hour Mediterranean sea attack,

• 58:58Alie Ward?

  like watching wolves hunt, witnesses say." And yes, some people on the boats have needed rescuing. No fatalities. What are the whales doing? Okay. Just nudging the boats and biting the rudders, ramming the hulls. Now, over a dozen orcas have been spotted engaging in the behavior in the region, but three in particular have been present for the majority of the attacks. And they are named black glatus, white glatus, and gray glatus. And they are female juveniles. Sometimes the older female whales will chase them off, like, go on, get.

• 59:40Alie Ward?

  But there are hypotheses, such as it's retaliatory for past bad experiences or injuries with the boat. But one researcher, Dr. Jared Towers with Bay Setology, said that that notion of revenge is, quote, "absolutely ridiculous." And other scientists say that the behavior is more consistent with, quote, "teenagers who do reckless things," or even like playfulness. So let's consult the science. There was a very recent August 2026 paper titled, "Insights into a Disruptive Behavior of Iberian Killer Whales with Boats: Perspective from Multiple Interactions with a Research Vessel." Yes, of course, that was published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. We're now learning. Why don't we have a subscription to that?

• 1:00:25Alie Ward?

  Because it seems like wall to wall, cover to cover, good stuff. Anyway, it notes that the cause and purpose of this behavior are not yet understood. However, Dr. Joanna Castro of the Marine Environment Research Association has noted that orcas as young as three have approached their research vessels with, in one instance, a chunk of tuna in its mouth as a gift, which is not consistent with aggression with the boats, but rather kind of an exploratory, curious juvenile behavior. So then we can relax, right? This is a truce. Of course not, of course not. When do ceasefires ever hold?

• 1:01:05Alie Ward?

  Rather, just a month or so ago, Tonya, one of the elder matriarchs of these pods, was spotted with what appears to be gunshot wounds in her dorsal fin.

• 1:01:19Alie Ward?

  So it hasn't always been this way with humans, and it still isn't for many, especially indigenous nations who have a beautiful relationship with orcas. The exhibit at the N H M features some really gorgeous work from native artists, especially from the Pacific Northwest. And it notes that relationships with the supernatural orcas are profound and respectful. And among many of the indigenous peoples along the northwest coast of North America, orcas are regarded as family members and ancestors. And there's indigenous folklore stories about brothers who went off to hunt and became a pair of orcas, orcas as bearers of hunting abundance. There are stories about orcas guiding anyone who's drowned at sea

• 1:02:04Alie Ward?

  down to deep underwater villages to become a whale. And they're also excellent hunters. So they're said to have descended from a single white wolf, which explains the, you know, white so-called saddle markings and their light belly and their eye patches. Oh, on that note, what about the coloration? Why are they so well dressed? Why are they showing up in a tuxedo?

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  Oh, they're elegant killers.

• 1:02:33Alie Ward?

  It's very James Bond. It's very James Bond.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Yes. It's cryptic coloration. It helps them do the whole shade and counter shade thing in the ocean to surprise or prey, you know, with the sun coming in. It makes them hard to see for all animals.

• 1:02:48Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  They look very elegant, but it's just, they're trying to be sneaky. That's it. They're doing the whole killer thing.

• 1:02:55Alie Ward?

  If you have a ballroom full of people in tuxedos, it is hard to distinguish who's who. But that counter shading means that they have a lighter belly. So if you're looking up, you can't see them. But if you're looking down, you also have a hard time seeing them.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Alie Ward?

  And then what about, like, they have kind of panda spots around the eyes?

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:03:11Alie Ward?

  Dude, is that to help with light absorption or reflection? We don't know.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:03:16Alie Ward?

  We don't know. So there are, of course, theories that perhaps that elliptical patch of white skin just over the orca's eye, just looking like a thick powder brow from 2016, that that serves as a good contrast background color so they can communicate to each other via eye contact. But they also are using their white bellies at times to flash light at schools of fish and then corralling them and tailwhacking them to have a feast of stunned fish. But again, that counter shading helps. So if you're looking up, their white belly is up against the light coming through the surface of the ocean. But if you're looking down, they're also harder to see because they're dark.

• 1:04:01Alie Ward?

  But yeah, they're whacking fish, they're eating mammals, they're being stealthy. But I gotta say, I ate salmon sushi like last week. And it wasn't even my only choice. I could have had a tofu salad. So if they're a killer, I'm a killer. I just don't have to get my tail wet to do it. So I'm gonna save my preaching. But speaking of saving things, let's donate to a cause of Jorge's choosing. And this week, it's O A R R A, which is the Ocean Animal Response and Research Alliance, which monitors living marine mammal populations and responds to stranded marine mammals and sea turtles along the southern California coastline. And they work with research institutions and government agencies

• 1:04:44Alie Ward?

  and aquaria and wildlife organizations and community partners to take meaningful action toward a healthier ocean for all. And you can find out more at O A R R A, O A R R A dot org. And thank you to sponsors of the show for making that donation possible. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before Ologies existed. After procrastinating for years, I literally built my website in one evening.

• 1:05:28Alie Ward?

  They have templates, they have flexible editing tools. Squarespace also makes it easy to share your work. You can book clients, you can get paid. They have built-in tools for scheduling and invoicing and email all in one place. Whenever someone I know needs a website, whether they're a scientist that needs to put their work up or someone who's just starting a business, I'm like, do it with Squarespace. So head to Squarespace dot com slash Ologies for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code OLOGIES to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it. The other day, your pod mother, Jared, was like, why do we have to eat every day? Like, three times a day? But Hungry Root, they get it. And they get to know your likes and your dislikes, your goals nutritionally,

• 1:06:13Alie Ward?

  what works with your lifestyle. And then they recommend groceries and recipes just for you. They help you discover new meals, ingredients you may not have chosen for yourself, but could end up being like, this is my new favorite. Hungry Root, they just help you spend less mental energy planning meals, shopping for groceries and cooking so you can just put that time toward what matters to you. And I teamed up with Hungry Root to create an online cookbook. It's called Pod Mom and Dad's High Protein and Low Dairy Menu. And we have a protein-packed chicken avocado rice bowl, sweet potato and chipotle salad. They also have some really great veggie options, too, like this Moroccan vegetable tajine. That's heck of good. You can explore my digital cookbook, Pod Mom and Dad's High Protein Low Dairy Menu,

• 1:06:58Alie Ward?

  for free at HungryRoot dot com slash Ologies. And for a limited time, get 40% off your first order plus a free item in every box for life with code OLOGIES. Oh, trips are full of unexpected discoveries. Maybe you see a sea slug or you find out that your friend still sleeps with a stuffed animal. But when it comes to your vacation rental, there should not be any surprises. When you book a Verbo vacation rental, if what you expect isn't what you get, Verbo Care has you covered. If something's broken or just not right, Verbo will work to make it right. Plus, you get 24/7 live human support with every booking. Grab your stuffy, we're going on vacay. So book today on the Verbo app. If you know, you Verbo. Terms apply.

• 1:07:41Alie Ward?

  See Verbo dot com slash trust for details. Here's some things that I love to wear, okay? I like wearing all black because it matches. Also, a sleeveless Mongolian cashmere sweater. Those are some things that I find myself reaching for all the time. And they have a permanent place in my wardrobe, and they are Quince. That's exactly what Quince does so well. They make these elevated essentials. They use premium materials and designs that are just timeless. They're made to be worn again and again. They're those quality pieces that are there to stay in your closet. And as the weather gets a little more crisp, Quince, they've got everything you need to round out that wardrobe. They got warm, responsibly sourced down jackets, cozy cashmere scarves.

• 1:08:26Alie Ward?

  And because they cut out the middlemen, you get very high-quality stuff for a lot less money. So find the fall pieces that you will reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince dot com. You can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And then when Quince asks where you heard about them, just let them know it was Ologies' Valley Ward because she loves them. It's the best way to support the show, too.

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

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• 1:09:10Alie Ward?

  Okay, let's sink our teeth into your questions. Your nubby little teeth, your tasty questions. Norab, Julia Reichelt, Amy Narasmatz, Sarah Filo, Pachika Wanna Know, how long can they live? And I imagine Julia says that that's different in the wild versus captivity.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  They can live a very relatively long life. Like, some of these orcas that can be traced decades of people seeing the same individuals. And they can say, it's like, oh, that orca is like now, she's in the pod with her daughter and her granddaughter. So they kind of stay together like a generational thing. So they can, they can live long, healthy lives.

• 1:09:59Alie Ward?

  So, just like us, females tend to live longer than males. And while the female average lifespan is about 50, there are some granny whales, like one J2, also called granny, and they can live up to like 90 years. Males make it to about 30 years. But this is all in the wild, though. Now, with free food and housing and doctors, they've got to live longer, right? No.

• 1:10:27Speaker 05

  Absolutely not.

• 1:10:28Alie Ward?

  So the 2015 marine mammal science paper titled Captive Killer Whale Survival notes that the first captive orcas were taken in 1961 and they were first bred in captivity in 1985. But the overall median survival estimate in captivity for captured wild whales was just six years. And the median survival for captive born orcas was 14 years. Very few captive orcas live past 30. So that's potentially only a third of their lifespans at most. So that's like humans dying at 12 years old. And I understand that the grandmas go through menopause and there's a hypothesis

• 1:11:13Alie Ward?

  that that's to sort of not be sexual competition, but also to help the young learn how to hunt?

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:20Alie Ward?

  That's so darling.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  It's very interesting, yeah.

• 1:11:22Alie Ward?

  It's so darling that they're like, I have a purpose, which in, with humans, it's like, once you're past menopause, it's just like, go get a facelift and try, and try not to talk to anyone, you know what I mean? Matt and Leslie, Leah, also Ally, Bonnie M. Rutherford, Melissa Foster, Cecilia Demoy and Camille want to know a little bit about matriarchy. Matt and Leslie asked, can we talk about them being a feminist icon? We love a matrilineal species. And yeah, how much is there a power structure? Do we know? No. I, it's, that's one of those things where I'm like, I can fold it into the grandmother hypothesis.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're matrilineal, so the females dominate in the, in the groups, which is something very interesting and something we don't necessarily see often in mammals. For example, pinnipeds or some groups of pinnipeds are male dominated. Other, you know, things like big cats tend to be male dominated. But having like matrilineal lineages or species that are matrilineal, I think it's something very interesting.

• 1:12:31Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  And something very cool to, to understand. I'm sure there's probably many more animals that are like that. We just need to do more research.

• 1:12:39Alie Ward?

  And of course, hyenas, which yes, we have a whole episode with them. We just released it with also NHMLA's Dr. Christine Wilkinson, who told me she likes to distinguish between matriarchy and matrilineal. So matriarchy is when females are in power, like in elephant societies, which have a single female leader. And according to the exhibit I was touring through, orca societies around the world are matriarchal. The oldest female leads her pod and shares her wisdom. She tells the younger orcas good places to hunt, areas to avoid. And grandmothers also care for the young whales. So in the leaner years, they can help the pods find food. They're like, I know a spot.

• 1:13:24Alie Ward?

  And many indigenous societies in the north coast of British Columbia and many other parts of the world are matrilineal, the exhibit notes, where rank and privilege is passed down through the mother's line. So matriarchal is one lady in charge. Matrilineal is a transfer of power from mothers to their offspring, kind of like inherited wealth. Now, not enjoying a matriarchy right now are humans. But we do have a very recent three-part menopause episode that we just put out. So do please enjoy that. Bonnie M. Rutherford, Into the Deep Sea, Cassavry, Dean, Crystal, Sarah Filo, Norab, Faith Stemmer and Stephanie Davidson wanted to know, Stephanie asked, how big is each pod?

• 1:14:09Alie Ward?

  I don't know if a pod is like three whales or like 100. Like, do we know how big they are?

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  It can be variable and sometimes they, different pods can kind of join together to form a super pod.

• 1:14:24Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  So it's very variable. They can be a few or they can be many. It depends a lot on available resources who have that space. So it's, it will vary across the world.

• 1:14:40Alie Ward?

  So those famous southern resident whales near Vancouver and Seattle, they have three pods with about 15 to 30 in each pod. And the population off Alaska has 15 pods. And those range in size from three orcas to nearly 40. And when several pods congregate, it's called a super pod. Now, the transients, they're harder to observe, but their pods can be a handful of orcas. But sometimes they join up with over 200 others, kind of like a killer conference. Now, the ones offshore, those are likely the hardest to observe. They're out there, they're offshore, but they can group up numbering anywhere from like 20 to 200 individuals.

• 1:15:23Alie Ward?

  Also, in Googling this, the search engine's AI feature popped up, which I hate passionately and I've tried to disable several times with little success. But the AI feature offered, people also ask, what is an orca pod called? The AI offered the answer, a pod. That's what we're using water for. A few people asked, Emily Arnold, Mark Rubin, Carrigan Richards, Katie Holtman and Mia wanted to know, Mia asked, I would love to talk about how they're the only natural predator of moose? Have you heard of orcas eating moose?

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  I have a vague memory of hearing about this.

• 1:16:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  Um, I'm sure that will predate on anything.

• 1:16:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  Um, that comes across their way opportunistically. I wouldn't be entirely surprised, although it, it wouldn't be, like, they will go out specifically hunting for moose like they would hunt, you know? Salmon or moose? Which one do I want today? I think they will go for the salmon.

• 1:16:31Alie Ward?

  Maybe there was like a documented case of a moose that, with a broken leg in brackish water or something.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, you know, people have found license plates inside the belly of, of like tiger sharks. That doesn't mean tiger sharks are eating license plates.

• 1:16:47Alie Ward?

  Yeah. But, yeah, can you imagine? They're like, you know what sounds so good is like crispy, like a Pringles tin full of license plate, just one after the other. You can pop, you can't stop. Yeah, there was one observed case in June of 1992. Four orcas off the coast of Alaska were seen eating a moose. But this happened the same month that Bill Clinton played the saxophone on Arsenio Hall. There were no handheld digital cameras in regular people's hands. Back then, 92? If you saw Bigfoot, all you had was your honor and your word. So no one even confirmed this moose case. It's just like, maybe, maybe not.

• 1:17:32Alie Ward?

  Speaking of salmon, Nicola McLaren wanted to know, why does the British Columbian southern resident salmon eating population not adapt to eating other protein sources as opposed to the salmon? Mrs. Potato Head said, I live in Washington and our southern resident killer whales are endangered partly because the salmon they're, they eat are decreasing in numbers. And so, yeah, would they move on from salmon if it's just not available?

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Well, it's either they move on or they go extinct.

• 1:18:04Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Animals can sometimes be very picky eaters. That's how I see it, just like, I think I mentioned earlier that some populations prefer eating fish, others eat other marine mammals. Doesn't mean that they can't eat something else. It's what they really like.

• 1:18:20Alie Ward?

  What they like.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  They crave.

• 1:18:22Alie Ward?

  They, some people are lasagna people, some people are sashimi people. What are you going to do?

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Alie Ward?

  Well, what about, you know, we talked a little bit about endangered, but that would be, I think, a population, not the species. Like, there's one species of orca, there's no subspecies?

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 1:18:39Alie Ward?

  Maybe.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are documented differences in coloration and genetics.

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  So much so that you can even say they're different subspecies. Who knows in the future it will split into subspecies like it has happened with other organisms. If you ask me, I will argue it's like just separate, separate the species, protect them all.

• 1:19:05Alie Ward?

  Well, you've got a meeting coming up, so you could always, you could always advocate.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  Is most likely one of the things that people will touch on, will talk about.

• 1:19:15Alie Ward?

  Do orca people ever get in fights?

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  Good question. I know different researchers get very passionate about what they study.

• 1:19:24Alie Ward?

  That's a yes.

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  I don't know specifically about orca people. I know about people working on other whale themes. And it's kind of fun to watch it from the sidelines.

• 1:19:36Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  But it's kind of fun watching from a side. That's better.

• 1:19:40Alie Ward?

  I'm sure that people get absolutely bent out of shape. And I love that. I would love to be a sea lice on the wall. But, you know, speaking of emotions running hot, a few people wanted to know about grief. Rachel Barr says, what can we learn about grieving from orcas? Milo Questa said, can we please talk about what we know on how they treat death? Like helping dying elders, keeping babies that have passed for days? And Casa Reed Dean also asked about if a baby dies, is some mourning behavior?

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  So there's definitely mourning behavior that that has been documented. Again, they're very smart. I, I, and we mourn when someone close to us passes away. Other primates do it as well, probably other, so to say, smart organisms that will have their specific rituals for mourning. We know it for orcas because they're so well documented.

• 1:20:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah. Please don't make me read this People Magazine article from four days ago titled, grieving orca spotted carrying her dead calf on her nose a year after a pod member exhibited the same behavior. And it says it's Succi, known as J31, is mother to one living daughter and has lost at least eight calves, researchers believe. So J31, her pod members, J36 and J35, have also lost infants or children and have been seen carrying the babies in the water by pushing them with their noses. And J36, Alki, carried hers for 11 days,

• 1:21:29Alie Ward?

  while Talequa, who's J35, lost a daughter in 2018 and then carried her around for 17 days. So why is this happening? Well, a lot of reasons. But infant mortality in wild orca populations can be as high as 50%. And animal behaviorists caution not to anthropomorphize wild creatures in terms of labeling this as grieving behavior. I would say killer sea hippos would probably whistle a sharp rebuke of anyone denying their pain and their loss. And for more on animals in mourning, you can see our spectacular Corbin Thanatology episode on crow funerals with the legendary Dr. Kaylee Swift.

• 1:22:12Alie Ward?

  I mean, ravens and crows have funerals, so there's a lot that we just haven't observed or haven't quantified or qualified. But Zachary wanted to know.

• 1:22:20Speaker 06

  Hello, Allie. Pod sun here. I have heard tell that orcas have taken down blue whales. There are confirmed cases of this. Is this true? Thanks.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  If I remember correctly, there's maybe one case at least. It's not abnormal for, for orcas to attack larger cetaceans. The, the first stranding that I, that I participated here after starting working here at the museum, it was a one-year-old compact whale.

• 1:23:00Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  It was huge for a one-year-old, of course. And it was very interesting to see that the tail had bite marks made from, by orcas. So it's food. They'll, they'll, they'll go for it. And they'll attack large sharks as well. So they're, they're attack big things. I guess if they feel like it, if they have a, a knack for it.

• 1:23:26Alie Ward?

  Yeah, you gotta make a living out there.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Alie Ward?

  You know?

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  If they decide to attack a big whale as, as a group, it means everybody gets some food at once.

• 1:23:35Alie Ward?

  Do they kind of rip at it like jackals a little bit? Do they kind of tear it apart and then just, and then nibble on chunks?

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Alie Ward?

  That's fun.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like a blood man in the ocean.

• 1:23:46Alie Ward?

  Yeah, it's like nachos.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Alie Ward?

  Love it. I was like, come on, man. Killer's gotta eat. And then I read that orcas were observed by marine scientists. They said they swam inside the mouth of the enormous whale to eat their nutritionally rich tongue just before they died. So killer whales, they are not beating the allegations. Lydia Trump wanted to know about the orca population in Punta Norte. If you've heard about this, the intentional stranding behavior. Do they hop up onto the beach and try to eat from there?

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Yes, seals. So they swim up very close. They kind of like almost beach themselves trying to catch some of these seals. They've probably perfected their technique.

• 1:24:33Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  By practice and passing down that knowledge.

• 1:24:36Alie Ward?

  Right. It is great that they're like, hey, hey, hey, watch this. I'm gonna teach you some stuff. How about Melissa Foster and Emily Swinson asked about, Melissa asked, thoughts on blackfish? And I know that I, I feel like when Blackfish came out years ago, a lot of people didn't fully realize how capable orcas were and maybe how, how cruel it was to keep them in captivity. Do you feel like it lent sympathy to these animals that you study?

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it does. I'm not a fan of cetaceans in captivity.

• 1:25:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Usually the, the size of the tanks where they're held are not big enough. And the idea of keeping animals like them in, in captivity, maybe only if there's some rehab that needs to be done so the animal gets released back into the wild. And I know a few cases back in Puerto Rico with my colleagues. And they're kind of rehabbed and then they're released back into the ocean. That, that's okay. But keeping them for the purpose of having them part of a, I don't want to say circus, but as, as show animals?

• 1:25:47Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  I don't, yeah, I don't like that.

• 1:25:51Alie Ward?

  I just wanted to drop the good news and raise the vibe that killer whales can be gay. Or they can at very least be bi-curious. And they've been observed with their six-foot dongs ablazing in groups of males, doing some dry humping. It's really wet humping. They've also got some lady to lady activity that's been observed. But what's going on with their mating, though? Well, let's turn to the textbook Sex in Cetaceans, which I pray to God was a play on Sex and the City. But they have a chapter titled Sex in Killer Whales: Behavior, Exogamy, and the Evolution of Sexual Strategies in the Ocean's Apex Predator.

• 1:26:32Alie Ward?

  And it says that those male-to-male activities in young orcas may be courtship practice. But in general, orcas mate outside their own pod by using those vocalizations to find a mate in another pod or maybe several mates. They're not necessarily exclusive. But this research also assured me that despite their killer reputation, coercive mating or mate guarding in this species has not been observed and appears to be unlikely. So what a dream. Protect them at all costs. How about conservation? Grace Conroy wanted to know, are orcas endangered? Gardener Gabby said, how are their numbers doing? Felix LaSalle said, obligatory checkup. Are they endangered at all?

• 1:27:16Alie Ward?

  And how can we help orcas? How are they doing?

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  I think orcas are doing relatively well, although they are not back. No single group of cetaceans or marine mammals are, at least the larger ones, are not back to the natural population numbers that were present before whaling. So whaling was very bad for many different groups of, of marine mammals, particularly large cetaceans. Most are doing quite well.

• 1:27:54Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  But they're not back to what was before, which should be closer to the normal for them. Whales are very important for coastal ecosystems. There's this cycle that's called the whale pump. I don't know if you've heard about it.

• 1:28:11Alie Ward?

  No, no.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  Orcas are, are large and they're kind of coastal, some of them. So they're feeding off the coast. They're feeding, but also they're excreting.

• 1:28:21Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  You know, they're pooping back into the ocean.

• 1:28:24Alie Ward?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  Those are nutrients for other animals.

• 1:28:27Alie Ward?

  Sure.

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  And they help feed the plankton who. Beats other animals and it goes up the food chain back into the whales and even ourselves. So we benefit for this whale. It's called the whale pump.

• 1:28:40Alie Ward?

  Whale pump.

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  It's like a poop nutrient food cycle.

• 1:28:45Alie Ward?

  The poop cycle is part of nature.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  Yes, and we take advantage of it for people who like to eat seafood. Yeah, we have to be thankful for the whale pump.

• 1:28:55Alie Ward?

  Right. If you're eating fish, you're eating part of the whale pump.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're benefiting from the whale pump. So healthy whale populations means healthy environments, healthy marine biodiversity.

• 1:29:10Alie Ward?

  Thank heavens for whale dumps. Where would we be without them? We'd be hungrier and so would the marine, other marine mammals and fishes.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:29:20Alie Ward?

  And whale dumps notoriously huge and really come out as like a cloud of poo poo dust. But one scientist's description of green, brown, or reddish, depending on what the whale eats. I was reading that as I was eating a bowl of cream of broccoli soup. But the bright spot is I also saw a video taken at SeaWorld Antonio in which an orca crop dusts the water right in front of the crowd, just a nice plume of yellowish brown waste. And then the orca does a quick lap, circles back, breaches,

• 1:30:01Alie Ward?

  and body slams the same water, showering the front several rows of jaw dropped spectators, just raining its waste on them. So orcas, there's a lot going on behind that melon. What about, you mentioned your favorite thing is when you're out doing fieldwork. Is there anything else that you love about orcas, like in particular that you admire about orcas that you just go, that's so cool? Cause I mean, hats, sinking yachts, there's already, calling each other by their names, like there's already so much that's nuts about them. But is there anything that you're like, they really floored you?

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  I think it's the whole way they make the sounds with this

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  lips, lip.

• 1:30:48Alie Ward?

  And their nose.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  Fawning lips in their forehead, you know? Nothing else. That's a pair of fawning lips in their forehead. Who else is like that? Evolution just went crazy on to the whales. It's like, let's make these things weird, even weirder. You know, mammals will go back into the ocean. They lose their hind limbs. Their skulls are asymmetric. Oh, also their blowhole is way back and there's a pair of lips embedded close to the blowhole so they can make noise.

• 1:31:21Alie Ward?

  It sounds like a really, like a, it sounds like an alien brainstorm, you know?

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  You might need that. If we didn't know what they really look like and we, all we had were fossils, it would be weird.

• 1:31:34Alie Ward?

  What about anything that's really tough about the job?

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  Ah, not having enough time to study all these groups in particular or trying to, yeah, I think that's, that's probably the hardest thing. Like cetaceans are so interesting and there's so much to learn from the modern ones and their fossil record that I feel there's not enough time for a lifetime to study them. Fortunately, there's a lot of people, a relatively large group of people studying them. So all together we'll learn more from each other. But I think that's one of the toughest parts of it.

• 1:32:14Alie Ward?

  But you all luckily get to meet up with each other. So that's good.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Alie Ward?

  Oh, also Kelly Shaver, Matt and Leslie, Jennifer Grogan, Mimi, Aaron Storm, Steve Prosterman, and Ashley Widener, who wanted to know, in Ashley's words, can they discuss the ethics of whale watching? I know it's possible to find more ethical tour providers who stay the proper distance away and try not to spend too much time following the same pods, but do whale watching tours cause harm? Oh, this, this is a complex topic and a few things. I have read that some people speculate it's terrible for the whales. Like it's being chased by noisy paparazzi and the boats scare off the fish. And not like none of the tourism operators respect the regulations in terms of distance.

• 1:33:04Alie Ward?

  But I've also heard that that's a very small minority of bad actors. So I reached out to a few marine scientists and journalists I know. And huge shout out to the aforementioned Dr. Sarah McEnulty of Skype a Scientist for immediately reaching out to another scientist, Dr. Iman Hua Jia, who goes by whale underscore detective online. Give her a follow. And Dr. Hua Jia told us that yes, there is a consensus on these from scientists, which is great. There are reputable whale watchers that do incredible work and are not hitting any whales. In general, the research on whale watching is that there are reputable whale watchers that do incredible work. And the research on whale watching is that it doesn't hurt the whales.

• 1:33:49Alie Ward?

  And I also asked Dr. Sarah Curtis, who's a journalist, who's beat for many years, was weird whale and marine happenings. Like if there was a cryptid that washed ashore on a beach, she would be down there reporting on it and figuring out like, no folks, that was just a degloved raccoon or whatever. Anyway, I love having her on speed dial. And she told me that the whale researchers she knows, who have like extensive experience with tourism outfits have said that some species of whale moms will use the whale watching boats as babysitters. And they'll just drop the babies off, basically. And then they'll just like F off and they'll go eat and do things that they can't really do with their babies. And she said that because whales are so super smart,

• 1:34:33Alie Ward?

  that if they figured out some way to use our own things that could be problematic for their benefit, that would not be surprising. So thank you for chiming in, Sarah and Sarah and Iman. And also, Dr. Iman Hua Jia, you are on deck for when I do a humpback episode. Please come on the show and thank you. So if it's done respectfully and following the distance regulations, it should be fine. Especially since a lot of the operators, it turns out, are also marine scientists or conservationists who allow scientists on board to make observations and collect a lot of data. So if this interests you, do some research on the company, see if it's been approved or involved with any researchers or orgs.

• 1:35:15Alie Ward?

  And rely on like a good telephoto lens rather than just needing to get two up in the whales rostrums. That means a no's.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  I think they're, the both tours are relatively well regulated. They wouldn't cause any, any particular harm. I think that would be a safe way of watching them. Also come tour orcas exhibit. You won't see a live one, but you get to experience and learn a lot about them.

• 1:35:43Alie Ward?

  Yeah. If you're sea kayaking, should you be freaked out that one's going to come up and chomp you?

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  I wouldn't be freaked out that they will chomp me, but I will be worried about them flipping me over.

• 1:35:58Alie Ward?

  Yeah, sinking your battleship.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  Like the only time I, I was in the water, but I guess if, one of the times I was in the water and there were some large dish dolphins. I just want a few times I, I felt a little bit scared in the ocean. And I've, I've gone to the beach since I was very young.

• 1:36:20Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  I grew up in a coastal town, so going to the beach was normal. And swimming and, you know, experiencing bigger or small waves,

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  getting stung by animals. But like being in the, in the water and seeing this large dolphin relatively close, it's something else. So I can't imagine if you were out there a bunch of orcas start trying to shake you out. That must be quite unexperienced.

• 1:36:49Alie Ward?

  Yeah, by experience you mean nightmare, but that would be my absolute nightmare of just being in a sea kayak and being the object of curiosity for things that like to punt seals. But I mean, only respect for them.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:37:08Alie Ward?

  Only respect for them. So come to the N H M and see the orcas exhibit or get yourself on the shore and look for an orca. Thank you so much for doing this. This is the best.

• 1:37:19Speaker 02

  You're welcome. It's fun.

• 1:37:21Alie Ward?

  Worth the wait.

• 1:37:24Alie Ward?

  So orcas, are they just jerk dolphins? I ju-- it's not that black and white. I mean, they kill, and they can be menaces, but we are so much worse. So these killer critters are acquitted on every charge by me, your father. Thank you to smart person, Dr. Jorge Velas Juarez, for letting me ask not smart questions. You can follow Jorge at Boratherium on Instagram. We will also link his research papers and the social media in the show notes. That exhibit on orcas is up at the Natural History Museum of LA County in LA through next April.

• 1:38:07Alie Ward?

  And before you go, you should listen to my field trip episode I did years back to get acquainted with the place. Some things have changed around there since I recorded it, but the heart remains the same. I'm at Allie Ward on Blue Sky on Instagram. I'm at Ologies on both as well. Smallologies are kid-friendly, G-rated episodes are in their own feed. They're linked in the show notes. Tell your friends with kids and your teachers. You can join Patreon at patreon.com/ologies. You can submit questions before we record. And Ologies merch is available at intentionally affordable prices at ologiesmerch.com. We do not make a lot of money from it. We just want you to find each other in the wild. We also post your pictures, so tag your Instagram's hashtag #OlogiesMerch and then we'll repost you.

• 1:38:52Alie Ward?

  Erin Talbert admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kellyard Wired is the website. Nudging us toward our calendar is scheduling producer Noel Dilworth. Not our eldest, yet still matriarchal Susan Hale managing directs the shebang. And like two fins steering us forward are editor Jake Chaffee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music, and Jake Chaffee tooled the Biomusicology guest David Bash winner's piano rendition into something very spooky. And if you stick around until the very end, you know I tell you a secret. This week, number one, it's that I did it.

• 1:39:32Alie Ward?

  Years, I've finally reached the number of open tabs on my browser where the latest ones are just hidden. Like, the icons cannot get smaller, and they're just not showing up on the bar at the top. Chrome is like, "Get it together. Close some of these. We're not even showing you." And I'm like, "Chrome, shut up. It's 9:00 PM. I'm in pajama pants from yesterday. I don't need that from you. I gotta get this whale out my back door, and I need these tabs." Also, I kinda don't even care, because tomorrow morning, I'm leaving for a little trip. I'm going to the Catskills. Those are some mountains in New York.

• 1:40:17Alie Ward?

  I'm also gonna get to see my sisters and some dear friends. I'm so excited. The leaves, I create-- there's-- it's gonna be-- it's pumpkins, apples. I'm, like, physically nauseous from having butterflies. I'm so excited. I don't even own a scarf. I don't care. It's gonna be nice. If you need more Spooktober episodes, go to allieward.com/ologies/spooktober. We got a lot. We got pumpkins, we got apples, we got bats, we got demons, we got monsters. We got it all. So enjoy.

• 1:40:56Alie Ward?

  And then later this month, some brooms and a little Mothman lore are coming your way. So stay tuned. Tell a killer whale they're doing a good job. All right. Bye-bye.

• 1:41:36Speaker 05

  I'm gonna kill it. I don't believe that. It's because you believe the lie.

• 1:41:43Speaker 03

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• 1:42:16Speaker 07

  Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting, and then another meeting. Hit your booking point? Book with Southwest and enter airplane mode.