published in marine biology journal Frontiers in Marine Science<\/a> on Sunday, researchers said orcas showed the ability to efficiently attack the young great whites in their signature hunting pods.<\/p>\n\u201cAerial videos indicate consistency in killer whales\u2019 repeated assaults and strikes on the sharks, indicating efficient ability by the mammals in attempting to induce tonic immobility in the prey and allow uninterrupted access to the liver for consumption,\u201d the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce extirpated from the prey body, the target organ is shared between the members of the pods including calves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two videos, one taken in 2020 and the other in 2022, show orca pods attacking great whites under water, flipping them onto their backs to stun them, then removing their livers to share amongst the group, discarding the shark\u2019s remains.<\/p>\n
Erick Higuera-Rivas, a marine biologist who captured the footage, told NBC News that he initially couldn\u2019t believe the orcas had attacked a great white shark nursery, and noted that both of the documented hunts appear to have been carried out by the same group of liver-hungry killer whales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Great white sharks often come to mind when people envision aquatic apex predators, but there\u2019s one species above…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[712,49,48,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-258921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}