The Dead Salmon Theory

 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..."