Orcas are not creatures to mess with, especially if you’re a great white shark. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Orcas aren’t known as killer whales for nothing. In an ocean full of apex predators, orcas pretty much have the head of the table locked down and in the short clip you see here, an orca makes that very, very clear to a great white shark.
You likely already know that orcas have been known to kill and eat great whites, focusing especially on their livers.
“A great white shark is a nice, big concentration of food,” marine mammal scientist Dr. Luke Rendell from the University of St. Andrews said, “so it’s perhaps unsurprising that some populations [of orcas], where these sharks occur in sufficient numbers, have learned to exploit that.”
Orcas are incredibly intelligent hunters, too, and often use all sorts of tactics to gain the upper hand. In this clip, courtesy of National Geographic, an orca grandmother named Sophia takes aim at a great white before speeding towards it at an astonishing pace. Then it rams it in the side, breaking the poor shark’s ribs. The term “ribs,” is used loosely, since sharks technically have something called a gill arch that protects the gill filaments necessary for them to survive. Once the shark is incapacitated, Sophia finished the job by suffocating it. That might be a little confusing, since sharks live in the ocean, but some sharks need to move constantly to ensure oxygenated water is flowing over their gills.
It might be hard to watch — nature often is — but it’s part and parcel of a wild animal’s life. The orca likely used the shark to help feed her family. The circle of life, right?
