In each of the instances recorded over two decades, orcas approached a person within a length of the orca's body, and dropped freshly hunted prey in front of the human.

Jared Towers, executive director of Bay Cetology, a research nonprofit based in Alert Bay, British Columbia, was on a boat in waters at the northeastern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, when a transient orca offered a freshly-killed harbor seal pup. “I did not have my phone out when T046C2 came over and dropped the seal,” Towers wrote in an email, “But I had time to get it when she left it there sinking before circling around to pick it up again.” He took a photo, showing the orca’s still-open, toothy mouth after just releasing the seal.

New Scientists article link

Towers says this demonstrates that killer whales are capable of generalised altruism, or kindness. It also shows that orcas can recognise sentience in others and are curious and bold enough to experiment across species, he says.

This generalised altruism makes sense in social societies where members benefit from cooperation. Killer whales are also some of the few marine predators that occasionally find themselves with excess prey. Sometimes, a pod will kill a larger whale than they can finish, for example. “You can just leave it, you can play with it or you can use it to explore relationships in your environment,” says Towers.

  • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
    13·
    1 day ago

    Orcas almost never attack humans, as to be essentially anecdotal, and most of the times attributed to error. The attacks on boats have often ended in the crews bailing out and ignored by the orcas, who were clearly attacking the boats, not the humans.

    • Typotyper@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      18 hours ago

      There are old stories from whaling colonies in the south Atlantic (Falklands if my memory is correct) where orcas would rescue sailors who fell overboard. The sailors /whalers often fed the orcas scraps. So either kindness or taking care of the hand that feeds them.

  • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
    22·
    2 days ago

    You know shits bad when even the wild animals are like, “here, have this salmon. You look hungry.”

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
    28·
    2 days ago

    I don’t blame the orcas - have you seen a human? Those things are, like, 1/3 of the size of an orca; they’re clearly malnourished, some good ol’ seal meat will fix’em up real good!

    Serious now. I think it’s interesting how they’re interacting cooperatively, with an animal of a different species. And it isn’t like either side domesticated the other (unlike, say, humans vs. dogs and cats); they don’t even live in the same environments, at most you have some humans doing short trips into the sea and that’s it.

    “What I think in a sense is more impressive is that humans basically give no credit to any other creature for having a mind,” Safina said. Yet many other creatures, including orcas, understand implicitly that humans have minds. “So they understand us, and give us more credit there, they seem to comprehend the world better than we do, in our self-imposed estrangement.”

    I feel like this is a step beyond theory of mind already.

  • Big_Boss_77@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    For some reason…I find this wildly depressing.

    I can’t quite figure out how to word it… but these magnificent, highly intelligent, apparently compassionate creatures are offering us food and we’re just…

    gestures vaguely at the world

    this.