A Reddit user circulated a striking wildlife video from near Victoria, British Columbia, in which an orca sends a harbor seal soaring high above the water.<\/p>\n
What happened?<\/p>\n
Shared to r\/NatureIsF******Lit, the post<\/a> picked up thousands of upvotes. One person in the thread identified<\/a> the whale as T69C Kye, a Bigg’s transient male born in 1995 and part of the mammal-eating West Coast transient group.<\/p>\n (Click here<\/a> if the embedded video does not appear.)<\/p>\n The footage shows the seal being flung high into the air. In the comments, users familiar with marine mammal behavior said the move was a recognized hunting method used by transient orcas that prey on seals and other marine mammals.<\/p>\n “The specific behaviour of Bigg’s (transient) orcas striking prey up into the air with their tail flukes is known as catapulting,” one of the top commenters explained<\/a>.<\/p>\n Why does it matter?<\/p>\n The video, shared on YouTube<\/a> 10 years ago, offers a look at how specialized orca populations hunt in the wild.<\/p>\n Bigg’s orcas, or transient killer whales, hunt marine mammals rather than fish, and the clip highlights how forceful and coordinated those attacks can be.<\/p>\n The user who identified Kye cited an unlinked source to declare the behavior “may be used to debilitate, kill the prey, and even soften the pinniped’s tough outer hide.”<\/p>\n What are people saying?<\/p>\n Commenters were filled with a mix of disbelief and admiration.<\/p>\n “That got to hurt. Wow,” one said<\/a>, to which another replied<\/a>: “Seals have been killed on impact from this. Wild.”<\/p>\n Another user wrote, “I think the seal actually hits a gull midair too.”<\/p>\n “His fate was sealed,” the original poster joked<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Reddit user circulated a striking wildlife video from near Victoria, British Columbia, in which an orca sends…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[305696,2430,305697,234227,53804,79,305698,54912,201],"class_list":["post-708271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bigg","tag-british-columbia","tag-embedded-video","tag-harbor-seal","tag-orca","tag-science","tag-transient-killer-whales","tag-victoria","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}