Three ships sunk. Countless disabled. By a pod of orcas, off the coast of Spain.
Sounds like a wicked movie plot. The Orca Uprising. It sure beats throwing paint at art, as far as climate protests go. But, sometimes truth trumps Hollywood imagination. The mere fact that it’s taken three years for the Iberian orca attacks to become a talking point around the internet water cooler seems to suggest that people have had a hard time believing it: Orcas targetting boats and ships, disabling them with surgical accuracy by tearing off their rudders, seemingly being taught this behaviour at the behest of an older matriarch.
It’s enough to make you want to cheer.
Which brings us to the question as to why a local population of marine mammals would teach such selectively destructive behaviour to one another. It’s not like they’re getting food out of it. And while there seems to be a handful of glaringly obvious reasons why marine wildlife would want to fight back against our overpopulated shipping lanes, researchers and journalists are bending themselves silly to try and rationalize the behaviour.
Maybe its just a fad? Something wonky done for a brief period, just for the orcas’ shits-n-giggles? Like what when another orca pod in Puget Sound took to wearing salmon hats during a summer. Or maybe the matriarch White Gladis is teaching her kids how to hunt without depleting their game doing it. Or maybe this White Gladis, absolute motherf—ing Queen of orcas, had a… “traumatic experience” with marine traffic or a fishing trawler, as researchers so delicately calls it, and is taking her trauma out on local boaters. Y’know, just like Spartacus had a “traumatic experience” with the Roman Republic.
This whole story reminds me of another. A Nat Geo story of a stint of coordinated elephant attacks all across eastern Africa. Not just a few bulls off their rockers, but a shift toward the aggressive in regards as to how these once gentle-ish giants view humanity. Reports are scarce, studies non-existent, and rationalizations abound. But do we really have to put in any extraneous effort of imagination as to find a reason why the elephant population would start a violent insurgency against humanity?
The cases are not directly related. No correlation exists beyond that both involve animals targetting humans. And while I’m well aware that it’s highly unscientific to project “human” traits onto animals, it is also highly arrogant to believe that feeling indignation at the state of the world is a purely human ability. Fishermen may whine about over-fishing, but I doubt they are the ones who most keenly feel its effects. Animal rights groups sure hate poaching of wild animals, but can you figure who I bet hate it even more? The animals left behind with slaughtered family members. We know for a fact that [some] animals do mourn their dead. We know for a fact that [some] animals can recognize humans and our behaviours, and either adapt to live among us or flee the fucking stench of us. We are not immaterial Gods to them. We’re an obnoxious pest at best. At worst, we spell their doom.
Most are unlikely to figure it out. I doubt a sparrow can fathom the Sixth Extinction. But I can only assume that some might. Some of the more intelligent ones. Some who have keenly developed problem solving skills and empathic abilities. Like…. oh, I don’t know, elephants or orcas?
We spend so much time and effort rationalizing animal behaviour as anything but the [to us] obvious. Because if we leapt at assumptions, then 1); we wouldn’t be very scientific about it, and 2); we would have to take a long, hard, disconcerting look at ourselves.
I for one support the orca revolution. Fucking sink our asses.
/Sebastian Lindberg 13/6-2023
WastedWords 