Orcas are the supreme apex predators of the sea, but we’re not on their menu… luckily. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Orcas aren’t called killer whales for nothing. If you’re on their menu… watch out. Luckily, we’re not. There have been a handful of orcas that’ve killed humans, but never outside of captivity. But if you’re a seal or a great white shark, watch out, because orcas are at the top of the food chain. Need proof? Watch this video from the Malibu Artist.
The most notable orca in terms of violence towards humans is probably Tilikum. You’ve likely heard of him — he was the sad star of the film Blackfish — and he killed a 20-year-old trainer named Keltie Byrne after she slipped into the pool before killing another man, Daniel Dukes, who snuck into his tank at SeaWorld Orlando one night. Then, in 2020, Tilikum killed another trainer. Her name was Dawn Brancheau, and he pulled her into his pool as she knelt at the edge of his pool. But Tilikum was an outlier, and his story is an incredibly sad one.
An orca in the wild poses almost no threat to a human being, but like I said, that doesn’t mean they don’t pose a threat. They’ve been known to hunt and kill great whites with a propensity for sucking out the livers.
In the video you see here, Carlos Gauna, who runs the Malibu Artist YouTube channel, spots a 40-year-old male orca named Liner off the coast of California. “Among the footage is a sequence where the orca captures a seal at depth using its echolocation abilities,” Gauna explains. “…He is the living definition of the apex predator of the sea.”
