{"id":819,"date":"2025-08-15T22:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T22:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/819\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T22:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T22:35:07","slug":"watch-orcas-practice-a-new-hunting-technique-before-using-it-on-a-blue-whale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/819\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Orcas Practice a New Hunting Technique Before Using It On a Blue Whale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Orcas<\/p>\n

Orcas are very, very smart. It doesn\u2019t pay to be their prey. Photo: YouTube\/\/Screenshot<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Orcas are an apex predator.<\/strong> They hunt in packs, using their wits to outsmart their prey and their speed and strength to overpower it. Though they pose no threat to humans (in the wild, anyway),<\/a> if you\u2019re on their menu\u2026 watch out.<\/p>\n

In the video, courtesy of the BBC and narrated by the inimitable David Attenborough, the viewer sees something pretty incredible: a pod of orca practicing a hunting technique that they\u2019ll use on a blue whale. Blue whales, as you know, are the largest mammal on Earth, and hunting even a juvenile one is no small feat.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to their enhanced cognitive abilities, they are frequent predators of other ocean giants, including large sharks,\u201d researchers wrote in a recently-published paper in Frontiers of Marine Science.<\/a> \u201cObservations of these predator-prey interactions are rare globally; however, records appear to be increasing in recent years, possibly due to increased access to surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The orcas, incredibly, have figured out that they can drown their prey if they can force its blowhole underwater for long enough. Using cooperative hunting methods, they practice with each other until they\u2019ve got it down pat, then put it to good use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orcas are very, very smart. It doesn\u2019t pay to be their prey. Photo: YouTube\/\/Screenshot Orcas are an apex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273],"tags":[1122,18,1123,1124,19,17,1125,133,461],"class_list":{"0":"post-819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-blue-whale","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-hunting","11":"tag-hunting-technique","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-orcas","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}