Latest news with #WildOrca
NBC News
23-06-2025
- Science
- NBC News
Orcas may be able to make and use tools, with a little kelp from their friends
It's the first time whales have been documented making and modifying tools, though humpback whales have been seen making air bubbles to trap krill and fish during hunts. The researchers think the behavior is common among southern resident orcas, a population that frequents waters off Washington state. The behavior seems to be more frequent in whales that are genetically related and could help them with hygiene, but also to bond as a social group, which is common in other mammal species. 'It matches well with grooming in other species of animals like apes and ungulates,' Weiss said. 'They'll groom and preen each other as a primary way of maintaining special relationships.' Deborah Giles, the science and research director of the nonprofit conservation group Wild Orca, said she was not surprised that the animals are capable of such a complex task. 'They're incredibly smart animals. The morphology of their brain shows us their capacity for social learning, language, and memory and emotion,' she said. 'This is another cultural thing they engage in. They learned it from family members and it probably serves multiple purposes — skin sloughing and solidifying social bonds.' Southern resident killer whales are a critically endangered population protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Their current population is about 73. The animals are social and live in close-knit family groups led by mothers and grandmothers. The whales are given tracking numbers by the Center for Whale Research and are closely observed by researchers, photographers and whale watchers — particularly when they're near communities along Puget Sound, like Seattle. 'I would venture to say it's the most well-studied population of whales on the planet regardless of species, because it's been going on for 50 years,' Giles said. How, then, did this stunning behavior escape researchers' notice for decades? They didn't have the right perspective. 'It's a really cryptic behavior. It's happening almost entirely underwater and it's a piece of kelp wedged between two animals that's only about 2 feet long,' Weiss said. More recently, researchers have started using drones to document the whales from an aerial perspective. As drone technology has improved, so has the data they've collected. 'What's really changed for us in the 2024 field season — we got a new drone,' Weiss said, noting that it provided higher-resolution video. He said the researchers first noticed a whale pushing kelp against another whale in April and then observed whales rubbing against each other for about 15 minutes. Once the researchers noticed the strange behavior, they began to see it more often. 'We started seeing it a lot — to the point now where most days we fly the drone, we do see at least one pair of whales doing this behavior,' Weiss said. The researchers suspect the behavior has been happening all along. 'We didn't have the right vantage. I do believe this is something that's probably been happening since time immemorial,' Giles said. 'I think we've just scratched the surface of understanding these animals, partly because of technology.' The southern residents have been in the spotlight of conservation efforts for decades. The whales are facing a number of threats, including declining quantity and quality of prey, toxic pollution and disturbance from vessel noise, according to the Marine Mammal Commission. Some research suggests the southern residents are on a path toward extinction, if more aggressive measures aren't taken. Weiss said the new findings offer yet another reason why it's important to take care of the species. 'Discovering something like this, late in the game for how long we've studied them, says there's a lot more to learn and they need to be around to learn those things,' he said. 'This is not just a collection of 73 whales … It's a unique culture and also a society. These are whales with a set of traditions that go back thousands of years.'
The Guardian
13-03-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Finding time for pleasure': what orcas taught me about sex in midlife
Four years ago, I was thrown for a loop by a wave of strange new symptoms including night sweats, an expanding midsection, dry skin, and a strong and sudden intolerance for noise. I suspected they had something to do with the neurological and physiological changes of perimenopause but was frustrated by the absence of clear answers about what was happening to my middle-aged body. Lacking few nuanced representations of this period of life, I began looking at what midlife looks like elsewhere in nature. It was inspiring. Trees, for instance, illustrate the capaciousness of midlife: as they mature, they add rings to their ever-expanding trunks. Mature trees in urban areas – those 20 years and up – remove higher levels of air pollution, sequester more carbon from the atmosphere and provide much more leaf area and shade than their younger counterparts. Another example, leaf cutter ants, showed how midlife can bring change in purpose. These ants forage plant material in order to cultivate fungal gardens, which they use to feed larvae. As ants age and become less efficient at cutting leaves, they transition to different but no less vital tasks, including waste management, removing harmful fungus and managing waste. Elder ants continue making meaningful contributions as they age, which may contribute to them living longer. But the most moving example involved Orca whales, my neighbors here in the Pacific north-west. Humans and orcas are two of only six mammals that experience menopause. (The other four are false killer whales, belugas, narwhals and short-finned pilot whales.) A few years ago, I heard an interview with Dr Deborah Giles, research director of Wild Orca, that piqued my interest. Giles is one of the world's experts on southern resident killer whales, an endangered community of just 73 living in the coastal waters of the Pacific north-west. These whales live in three separate pods – social groups of closely related animals led by post-reproductive females – that speak their own dialects but share a common language. 'The older females, besides being the repositories of knowledge … lead very rich lives,' Giles said. While all these whales are very tactile and sexual – young males spar with each other using their prehensile penises – post-menopausal females commonly engage in sexual activity and play with both young males and males of reproductive age. This was the most intriguing and inspiring morsel of sexual information I'd heard in a decade. Researchers surmise that these older females are educating males about sex, but also participating in encounters that are sensual and playful without any biological imperative – only pleasure. As my menstrual cycle sputters and revs, my vulvar moisture evaporates and my daily responsibilities accumulate, I occasionally forget that I have a sex drive. Remembering the orcas always makes me smile and reminds me to find time for sensual, physical pleasure – by myself and with my spouse – with no goal beyond feeling good. The sex lives of these orcas is a juicy subject, but these days I find myself thinking more about what Giles said about these whales being 'repositories of knowledge'. They are matriarchs, leaders, navigators and teachers valued and celebrated for their expertise accumulated over a lifetime. It's a powerful corrective to the ageism older women face – an increasing feeling of invisibility and irrelevance in a society that prizes youth. Last fall, I curated a series of conversations at the Seattle Public Library about female middle age and invited Giles to be part of a discussion on different models of middle age along with Laura Da', an Indigenous Eastern Shawnee poet, and Putsata Reang, a queer Cambodian journalist. She agreed, in part because her work at Wild Orca is about spreading the word about the whales' dwindling population and deteriorating environmental conditions. Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion The pods of the Pacific north-west hunt for food cooperatively and share the bounty. But the damming of rivers in Washington state means that when the pod leaders lead their families to familiar hunting grounds, there is not enough to eat. More from Angela Garbes's Halfway there: No sex drive and a 'tanking libido': how I redefined intimacy in midlife First my left knee, then my right: my middle-aged body's betrayal Perimenopause has brought chaos to my life – but also peace As food supplies dwindle and reproductive females have a harder time carrying calves to term, the lives of these older females take on even more significance. They hold the memory of life before the natural world was disrupted and disturbed by humans – evidence of a world we benefit from but can barely comprehend. The oldest known orca fossil is at least 2.5m years old and scientists believe killer whales have existed in some form for more than 50m years. The scale and scope is staggering – modern humans only have a 300,000-year history on this planet. The plight of these whales saddens and frightens me, but their existence makes me hopeful. We humans know so little about life and survival, and we have so much still to learn from our elders.
