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Orcas (or killer whales) are large, powerful aquatic apex predators. There have been incidents where orcas were perceived to attack humans in the wild, but such attacks are less common than those by captive orcas. [ 1 ]
A hunt begins with a chase followed by a violent attack on the exhausted prey. Large whales often show signs of orca attack via tooth rake marks. [84] Pods of female sperm whales sometimes protect themselves by forming a protective circle around their calves with their flukes facing outwards, using them to repel the attackers. [90]
[17] [18] He noted that the whales were spread along 38.2 kilometres of coast and were separated by a mean distance of 3.5 km (sd=2.8, n=11). This spread in time and location was atypical, as usually whales mass strand at the same place and at the same time. At the time that Dr. Frantzis wrote the article he was unaware of several important ...
Researchers have warned that human impact on the ocean is putting increasing pressure on dolphins and whales, and their ecosystems. The UK whale and dolphin conservation charity Orca recorded ...
A minke whale's annual diet consists of 10 kilograms of fish per kilogram of body mass, [53] which puts a heavy predatory pressure on commercial species of fish, thus whalers say that an annual cull of whales is needed in order for adequate amounts of fish to be available for humans. Anti-whaling campaigners say that the pro-whaling argument is ...
Sei whales are rorquals (family Balaenopteridae), baleen whales that include the humpback whale, the blue whale, Bryde's whale, the fin whale, and the minke whale. Rorquals take their name from the Norwegian word røyrkval , meaning "furrow whale", [ 16 ] because family members have a series of longitudinal pleats or grooves on the anterior ...
Bryde's whales have not been reported as taken or injured in fishing operations. They are sometimes killed or injured by ship strikes. Anthropogenic noise is an increasing concern for all rorquals, which communicate by low-frequency sounds. [8] These whales are protected off the US by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. [8]
The whales make groans, pops and belches typically at frequencies around 500 Hz. The purpose of the sounds is not known but may be a form of communication between whales within the same group. Northern right whales responded to sounds similar to police sirens—sounds of much higher frequency than their own. On hearing the sounds, they moved ...