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Apex Predators

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What is a predator? What is an apex predator? A predator is “An animal that naturally preys on others” (Oxford University Press). An apex predator is “A predator at the top of the food chain that is not preyed upon by any other animal” (Merriam-Webster). There are many predators as well as the prey in the world. For example, the lion is the predatory king of the jungle. The eagle is the predatory king of the sky. Especially in the ocean, the killer whale or orca is the predatory king. These are 3 reasons why the killer whale is the ocean’s top predator. Their physical characteristics are appropriate to hunt their diets. Junior Explorers said that the killer whales are the largest of the dolphins and one of the most powerful predators of the …show more content…

They have a cooperative communication system. BioExpedition wrote that each pod has a very complex communication system. Moreover, each pod produces a completely different set of sounds. So each individual can recognize the group where it belongs. Among the members of the same community, such a cooperative communication is transmitted and passed on from generation to generation. He explained more that each pod of killer whales also uses their echolocations, “A process used to locate distant or invisible objects” (Sarah G, 2013), to navigate together and to hunt their prey cooperatively in a slightly visible …show more content…

The first of their cleverly hunting tactics is the “wave making” technique. Nature(PBS) explained about this technique that the pod of the killer whales will attack the ice floe in tight formation by creating a huge wave toward the ice floe by how they dive underneath the surface of the sea and push to the wave with their fluke. The making wave finally crashes over the ice floe and sweeps the seal off. Killer whales can not only attack their prey in the ocean but also beach themselves to ambush the sea lions on the shore by storming the beach or the “beach storming” technique. This strategy is always passed on from generation to generation. The third of them is the carousel-feeding technique. The carousel-feeding technique is how their pod releases cooperatively a burst of air bubbles and belly flashes to herd the herring into a tight ball close the surface of the water. The purposes of slapping the ball with their tails are to stun the fish and to gulp down by the mouthful in the easier way. (Nature(PBS),

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Director, writer, and producer, Gabriella Cowperthwaite, in her documentary, Blackfish, describes the shameless hunting and treatment of killer whales. Cowperthwaite’s purpose is to persuade us into opening our eyes to the reality of what we are doing to killer whales by confining them in captivity. She invents an emotionally wrenching tone in order to transmit to the adult viewers that living in captivity may not be acceptable life for the whales. The film effectively showed that the whales should not be kept in captivity by giving the audience examples of their signs of aggression and displays of emotion. Cowperthwaite begins her documentary by showing how killer whales can become barbaric when held captive.

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In Blackfish, one of the most critically acclaimed documentaries of 2013, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite asserts that the inhumane practice of keeping killer whales in captivity is not the right thing to do. They are animals and they like to be open and free. Keeping killer whales in captivity is dangerous to the animals themselves, it makes them more aggressive, and also has the potential to harm and even kill the humans who work with them. Orcas are simply not meant for confinement. They are very calm and happy when they are in the ocean.

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They hunted these whales, and ripped them from their family. They would always take the young ones away from their home. John Crowe, who was one of the many people that helped hunt the orcas, talked about how devastated he was to do that. They would grab the babies, but the family wouldn’t leave. They stayed watching them take their young and all he could think of was that this is equivalent to someone kidnapping a human child from their mother.

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365 Words | 2 Pages

How can anyone look at the whale crying and think that is morality because it is not. Whale ate one of the trainers. Tilikum is responsible for the deaths of 3 individuals, including a top killer whale trainer, Dawn Brancheau. Blackfish shows the devastating consequences of keeping such intelligent and sentient creatures in captivity. They knew Tilikum was dangerous because in his profile information it states, “Sometimes lunging toward control trainer” 70 plus killer whale trainer accidents but no one talks about them.

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(Blackfish). Killer whales in the wild are aggressive towards each other just as they are to humans, in 1989 an accident involving two whales: Kandu and Corky resulted in Kandu bleeding to death. (Kirby 2) this would have never happened if the whales had the enough space they needed to separate from each other. Contrastingly, killer whales in the wild are more peaceful toward each other and humans. There is only one accident of an orca biting someone in the wild.

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Killer Whales should swim up to 100 miles a day in the wild. But in their tanks, they would need to swim 1, 208 laps (3,105 lengths back and forth) to get that

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Orcas are incredibly smart, so the mother orcas would swim away from where the herding was happening. As a result to this, SeaWorld began releasing planes that would fly over the sea and find the mothers, because the orcas had to come up for air eventually. They would throw bombs into the water, so the orcas would be forced to go into nets. One of the whales, named Tilikum, who recently died in January of 2017, was kidnapped from the ocean at the young age of two. A man named Ted Griffin, who helped capture the whales, killed a mother whale in front of her daughter, to later be named Shamu; the first performing whale at SeaWorld.

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Free the Orcas Orcas are majestic, beautiful creatures who do not deserve to be confined to tanks that to humans are like bathtubs. The reason orcas are called killer whales is because they are not animals to be messed with. There should be no human interaction that will cause and orca to feel stressed or threatened. Just like humans, orcas have the ability to feel pain when they are separated from their families. Throughout the years aquatic centers have used orcas as entertainment, but in reality orca captivity has taken a toll on the mental and physical health of these animals as well as endangering their human trainers.

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The Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is one of the largest of the Cetaceans. They are fairly well known, even outside of the scientific community. They are identifiable by their dark grey dorsal color, white underbellies, very long pectoral flippers and by their habits of breaching and raising their tales above the water before diving. Their range expands tropical, temperate, and sub polar waters all around the world. They migrate in search of breading grounds and feeding grounds.

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Although the orca can be found in both in the open ocean and in the coastal waters, they primarily inhabit the continental shelf’s in the water less than 200 meters deep. In the cold water area is the most distribution limited by the seasonal pack ice. The killer whale is the top carnivore consumer on the food web. Killer whales may be large in size and appetite, but they still act on instinct and have no desire to kill intentionally. The killer whale is also a very playful and intelligent creature like most dolphins are, therefore they do not deserve the name killer whale.

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Whale sharks like to hang out together and eat together. Now you know about whale sharks.

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In 2000, a mass stranding of whales in the Bahamas revealed hemorrhaging near the brain, ear, and fats in the head from a sonar used by the U.S. Navy during an exercise (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and US Department of the Navy 2001). In 2002, another stranding occurred in the Canary Islands and pathologists examined the bodies of stranded beaked whales to reveal hemorrhaging in the same areas of the head as the whales from the Bahamas, as well as in the kidneys (Fernández et al. 2005). Upon further inspection, there seemed to be other complications, such as lesions and embolisms, in the vessels and tissues surrounding organs. Fernandez et al.

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In an evolutionary biological sense, mimicry can be defined as a similarity of one species (the mimic) to another (the model) as a protective mechanism for either one or both species, against another species (the signal-receiver or the audience), typically a common predator of both species. The stimulus occurs as appearance, behaviour, sound or scent. The model is usually another organism, with the exception of automimicry. For prey species, mimicry strategies evolved as an adaptation against predators within their environment. The selective action of a signal-receiver drives the evolutionary process.

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1294 Words | 6 Pages

The potential of off shore wind farms have been recognized just recently in the world as an energy source. For thousands of years people have used wind power in ships, pumping water, and much more. Beginning of the 21st century, the demand of electricity started to increased and renewable energy such as wind power has been the answer to many industries. More people are able to see the potential of wind power in the United States due to the fact that it doesn’t cause any pollution, which is one of the major problems for the environment. However, many manufacturing industries argue that wind farms require heavy investments on wind turbines and could cause a threat to the wildlife.

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The separation of non-endangered species will not deter whalers from hunting any whale in sight. These activities are widely documented and filmed for the world to see. Further, “people hunted whales for their oil to fuel lamps and candles, to lubricate machinery and to make margarine, lipsticks and other products.

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