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photo gallery > Orca Behaviour (11)
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Orca are never too old to live with mom
Click image to view full size. Orcas live in matrilineal family groups led by elder matriarchs (females). Two or more matrilines may form a pod. Both male and female offspring typically remain with their maternal family for life.In this photo J pod's matriarch J 2 ("Granny") is seen in close proximity to her eldest son, and J pod's eldest male, J 1 ("Ruffles").
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Passenger's dream and guide's dilemma
Click image to view full size. Guidelines strictly adhered to by all Victoria companies and a matter of professional pride amongst guides require a minimum 100metre/yard distance be maintained. The problem is, no one has informed the animals and they often become curious, surfacing beside a vessel. Of course this delights passengers but requires vessel captains to immediately shut down their engines.
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Id'ing orca
Click image to view full size. An orca's saddle patch, the gray or white area directly behind its dorsal fin, is commoly used to ID each animal. However, other visual cues can be more obvious such as the "notch" from this males dorsal fin -- allowing him to be more easily ID'd from a greater distance or in more difficult conditions.
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Mating behaviour
Click image to view full size. In order to maintain a healthy gene pool, Southern resident orca do not mate within their own pod. Instead, pods meet during events called "superpods" and choose partners, mate and engage in some intense socializing. These two begaan thie courtship by "speaking" to each other, and, recognizing that they both speak the same language,yet with a differnt dialect, they have recognized each other as being from differnt pods and thus suitable mates.
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Matrinlineal group
Click image to view full size. Resident orcas live in extended family groups, or pods, of up to 60 whales. Whereas offspring of other toothed whales will leave their pods and join other groups for breeding, orca offspring of both sexes stay with their mother for the duration of her life. A mother and her offspring will rest, feed, and travel in very close proximity. Only when a teenage orca has her own calves will she stray more than a few hundred yards from her mother. Maternal groups may contain four generations of whales with each female giving birth to five surviving calves. -
Lunging for salmon
Click image to view full size. Orcas possess sophisticated underwater sonar that enables them to perceive their surroundings ten times more effectively than our most advanced equipment. Their nasal passages produce a series of extremely fast, high frequency sounds that bounce off objects and give important clues about their distance, speed, shape, texture and composition. Orcas are even able to 'zoom in' on objects by varying the pitch, loudness, duration, angle and breadth of this sonar and then use this information to navigate and to locate and chase prey. In addition, orcas use sound to communicate with each other and keep pods together. Different races and pods produce distinctively different acoustic signals.
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L110 with mother L83
Click image to view full size. In August 2007 pregnant L pod female L83 gave birth to a new calf. I managed to take this photo -- one of the first ever taken of the newborn -- before she was 10 days old. Orca gestation period is 15 months and there appears to be no specific breeding season as calves are born year round, with slightly more births occuring in the winter.
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L110's first close up.
Click image to view full size. Have a look at L110's eye spot; at under two weeks old she still shows some of her baby wrinkles as her skin adjusts to a new atmosphere outside the womb. Notice also the dark reddish colour of her eye spot which indicates that her liver is not yet working properly and that she has excess billirubin in her blood stream. L110 in fact has juandice. This is common among newborn orca as their mothers have accumulated a great many toxins from the environment that are immediately passed on to their young. -
Orca anatomy
Click to view image full size. Males and females can also be easily distinguished by markings on their belly. Females have an oval genital patch marked with three black spots signifying a central vagina and two retractable nipples, whereas the male orca has an elongated white patch with a single black slit covering the penis. The only time thepenis has been seen to leave this sheath is during mating, like the photographed animal who has just finished mating with a young femal from J pod.
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spyhop.jpg
Click image to view full size. The Orca's skin is exquisitely sensitive to touch, and presumably plays an important role in maintaining social connectivity. In fact, trainers of captive orcas have found that touch is a more powerful motivator than food. These two transients are stopping to rub against each other.
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Tail slap
Click image to view full size. Orca ore often seen to slap the water with their tails and this is thought to be a signal for other members of the pod. Its meaning is unknown.
