Orcas

We got into a pissing contest a week ago about whether killer whales were moral. A consensus was not reached. A couple of evenings ago I was watching a Discovery Channel program on orcas. One of the scientists has been studying the same pod for years, New Zealand I believe. Anyway, long enough that not only did she recognize the individuals, they knew her. There were great white sharks in the area. In general they seemed to avoid each other, or at least worked different niches. One day a large shark wandered into orca territory. There was a splashing about and an orca swam over to the boat and presented the dead shark to the people like a cat showing off a dead mouse. Later they got in the water and filmed how they dealt with the shark, which would seem to be more than a match for the orca. The orca flips the shark over on it's back, which causes "tonic immobility", a type of paralysis. They just hold them until the shark drowns because it isn't moving forward, which is how it gets water over it's gills.The shark is beautifully equipped with a couple of million years of evolution, but it does not learn. I have no idea how those orca's learned to deal with sharks, but they did and they apparently "teach" each other technique.  They are very intelligent, which makes me admire them, and it makes The Rev hate them, because they do seem to know better.

This just in! Reading something this morning. This is humanoid stuff, but maybe eventually we'll know about orca morals too. We may have to change their nicknames to Jerk Asshole Whales after all:
"Meanwhile evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists like Marc Hauser, at Harvard University, are studying moral behavior with such precision that they are able to pinpoint the parts of the brain involved in ration-al thinking, emotional reactions, and motivations. And, as always, the context is Darwinian. Why did natural selection push things this way rather than some other way?"