Video from excited ecotourists shows how orcas manage an unlikely feat of predation: killing a massive whale shark. And that’s just one of the killer whales’ conquests.
Four videos of orca hunting sprees, the earliest from 2018 and the latest from 2024, suggest that an orca pod in the Gulf of California is specializing in hunting sharks and their relatives, researchers say. Other targets include such ecotourist faves as mobula rays, says marine biologist Francesca Pancaldi of the marine science center in La Paz associated with Mexico’s Instituto Politécnico Nacional. She and her colleagues lay out their ideas for orca specialization November 29 in Frontiers in Marine Science.