Read this a while ago in a story about the recent spate of orcas, a.k.a. killer whales, attacking and damaging boats:
"... Scientists point to orcas’ documented propensity to adopt brief-lived behavioral “fads,” such as the weeks in 1987 when killer whales in the Pacific Northwest paraded about with dead salmon draped across their heads. Such fads have no clear benefit to the population — they usually are anomalistic in nature — and thus are one of many indicators that killer whales participate in complex cultures humans are unlikely to fully understand. Orca scientists say these fads are uniformly observed among juveniles and adolescents, making them analogous to aggressive and reckless behavior in human teenagers. Some describe the Iberian orcas attacking boats as “hoodlums” and believe the behavior is meant for young orcas to demonstrate membership in their group as well as a kind of prowess. They also believe that, as with humans, the orca fads fade as the whales mature, though they can last anywhere from two weeks to two years."
This blew my mind in two ways
First was "Wow! The animal kingdom is unfathomably complex! Cetacean species might have civilizations that - while lacking written records and tools and science (at least as we understand it) - might nonetheless be equal to our own!!"
But the second mind-blow was, in a way, more disorienting - the sudden thought that what excites and enthralls human beings, including everything that excites and enthralls me - is conceivably no more significant than parading around with dead salmon draped on your head.
Perhaps obsessing about particular kinds of music - or playing and/or following a sport - or being into a distinct clothing look - perhaps it's all just a variant of Dead Salmon.
These blogs - salmon on the head!
The connection to the orca equivalent of adolescence seemed to bolster this suspicion.
Apparently the orcas are only attacking wooden boats - yachts and the like - as opposed to ones with steel hulls. Because with the latter, they can't inflict any real damage - whereas craft made of wood are potentially destroyable.
This detail again blew my mind a bit, because it so much corresponds to teenage-boy dickishness, and to a certain strategic thinking within that dickishness. Picking your target for maximum pay-off.
I mean, these have got to be boy orcas.
I also imagine the older orcas looking on at the young ones butting into yachts and shaking their heads and saying "whatever will they get up to next?", "don't they know how ridiculous they look?", "bloody fools, they're going to get themselves harpooned if they don't watch out"....
And perhaps some of the really old ones say things like "this boat-bashing lark ain't a patch on when we used to do the dead salmon draping..."
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21537-wild-bear-uses-a-stone-to-exfoliate/ Bears use combs!
ReplyDelete"I also imagine the older orcas looking on at the young one butting into yachts and shaking their heads and saying "whatever will they get up to next?", "don't they know how ridiculous they look?", "bloody fools, they're going to get themselves harpooned if they don't watch out"...."
ReplyDeleteThere was a story out last week suggesting that scientists now believe that is almost literally true:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/20/world/orca-menopause-grandmother-effect-scn/index.html
Post-menopausal female orcas spend a lot of time looking after the younger males, trying to keep them out of trouble.
From that CNN story:
"Now, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, these orca matriarchs, which can live up to 90 years, also like to spend their later years indulging in some helicopter parenting of their sons. Female orcas help their sons navigate the complexities of orca social life and protect them from fights with other killer whales...
It was possible older females used their experience to help their sons in encounters with other whales, Grimes said. The team is collecting drone footage of the whales to better understand the behavior.
“We think that these females use their enhanced knowledge of other social groups that obviously comes with time (and) experience … to help their sons navigate the interaction — whether that is signaling to them vocally or behaviorally,” she said. “That’s one hypothesis of how they might be protecting them. Another one is that they involve themselves in a conflict if a fight looks risky (for their son).”"
how funny
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