6.Orcas do not travel alone, but in large social groups called pods, containing up to 40 individual members. There are two different types of pods: A resident pod is known to be less aggressive and it prefers fish as prey. Transient pods relate more to the behavior of wolf packs and show more aggression, hunting marine mammals by working together. Orcas use echolocation to talk to each other and hunt. Killer whales also help one another take care of the young in a pod with the young females helping mothers look out for young orcas.
7.Killer whales exist at the top of the food chain as apex predators with no other animals hunting orcas other than humans.
8.These whales consume sea birds, squids, octopuses, sea turtles, sharks, and fish. Orcas also eat other marine mammals such as seals and dugong.
9.Orcas utilize an array of various techniques to catch their prey. Occasionally, they beach themselves to trap and catch seals on land, meaning they jump from the water onto land. They also attack schools of fish in their pods.
10.Many may wonder, do killer whales sleep? Yes, they sleep by shutting down one hemisphere of their brain at a time. While half of the killer whale’s brain catches up on sleep, the other half controls the breathing in the body.
11.Female killer whales give birth to one offspring at a time every three to 10 years with the gestation period lasting for around 17 months. Their babies are referred to as calves and are about 8.5 feet weighing up to 350 pounds at birth. They nurse for five to 10 seconds at a time, multiple times an hour until they mature to a year.
12.The killer whale’s conservation status is unidentified because the world orca population is unknown. Some populations are protected, however, communities around the world kill these whales for a number of reasons. Orcas can be killed for food, by contaminants in the ocean such as chemicals and oil, and by fisherman who deem them as competition to catching fish.