Jaw-Dropping Video Shows Orcas Flipping a Great White Shark to Feast On Its Liver

Orcas are called “killer whales”. for a reason. These are top predators Proficient pack hunterby using Coordinated Attacks and Special Tactics to take down their prey.

Scientists recently captured stunning drone footage of a pod of orcas in the Gulf of California turning juvenile great white sharks upside down and feeding on their livers. Researchers describe the attack in a new study published in the journal Monday Frontiers in Marine Science.

The video is the work of the study’s lead authors, marine biologists and wildlife underwater cinematographers Eric Higuera and Marco Villegas. Higuera has been filming and studying orcas for more than a decade, but the first time he saw this particular shark-hunting behavior was in August 2020. At first, he couldn’t tell based on the drone footage which species of shark was being hunted.

“I thought, ‘Well, it could be a sand tiger shark,’ you know — one of those similar-looking sharks. But I never thought it was going to be a great white,” Higuera told Gizmodo.

delusional behavior

Although interactions between these two deadly predators are considered rare, scientists have documented orca attacks on great white sharks in other areas off the coast of South Africa, Australia, and California. Killer whales target these sharks for their nutrient-rich livers, which can weigh up to 1,300 pounds (600 kilograms), according to Higuera — about a quarter of the shark’s total mass.

Flipping the shark is a common hunting technique that orcas use to induce a state of tonic immobility. This move temporarily paralyzes the shark, preventing it from fighting back. This gives orcas direct access to their livers.

What’s unique about this pod of orcas in the Gulf of California is that they’re targeting juvenile great whites as opposed to adults, study co-author Salvador Jorgensen, a marine ecologist and assistant professor at California State University Monterey Bay, told Gizmodo.

Orcas tend to hunt adult great whites because they offer a large reward. “The liver is very large,” Jorgensen explained. “But what we’re seeing in the Gulf of California is that they’re repeatedly going after smaller individuals that may have been born a year or two earlier.”

More research will be needed to find out what drives these orcas to target young great whites instead of adults, but the authors have some ideas about the benefits this strategy could offer.

Changing hunting tactics

According to researchers, juvenile great white sharks lack liver size that they can easily fill. It may be easier for a pod of orcas to flip a smaller, smaller great white onto its back, enabling an easier kill.

Juvenile great whites can also be more naive than adults. Fully grown great whites have an uncanny ability to sense when orcas are nearby. “If they get even the tiniest scent or hint of an orc, all those white sharks will flee the area,” Jorgensen explained. If this is a learned behavior, it would suggest that smaller sharks are more vulnerable to orca attacks, he said.

“Maybe they haven’t developed that flight technique yet,” Higuera suggested.

Climate change may also play a role. El Niño events in the Pacific Ocean and the increasing frequency of marine heat waves appear to have greatly altered the nursery area of ​​white sharks, increasing their presence in the Gulf of California. That change may have presented this particular pod of orcas with an opportunity, offering seasonal cohorts of juveniles.

Regardless, documenting repeated orca attacks on juvenile great whites for the first time raises many new questions about both the species and their interactions. “It’s exciting that in this age when we have sensors and cameras everywhere, we’re still finding new things,” Jorgensen said. “There are still such mysteries in the sea.”