Killer whales and orcas, among other species of whales, are probably some of the most famous and favorite animals to ever exist on the face of the earth.
As the black and white predators with highly developed brains and extraordinary social behavior, orcas are adored and appreciated. In the present times, these animals can be found all over the world, primarily because of massive tourism and commercialization, but yet there are unanswered questions about these great beasts.
To comprehend the reasons for such limited knowledge about the orcas, one should pay attention to the difficulties in their observation and the peculiarities of their activity.
Orcas: Socially Complex and Elusive
They exhibit structures and well-organized societies and are normally found in large groups of close-related females’ family units known as pods. And there are these pods that are typically multigenerational that have been known to display rather avoidances of communication and different behaviors as well.
However, one of the main facts we understand so little about orcas is that the structures of their population differ greatly. The different pods have their own unique language, ways of tracking their prey, as well as their social behavior, hence making it hard to draw conclusions from one pod to the others.
For instance, the orcas living in the Norwegian waters chiefly dine on fish, while their counterpart in New Zealand involves itself in ray and shark hunting. These differences in their diet and behaviour imply that orcas are plastic and culture in their pod type.
This volatility, however, is interesting and creates a problem when establishing the complexity of the orcas’ behavior for aspirant researchers.
Challenges of Studying Orcas in the Wild
The orcas are nomadic animals and almost always move from one ocean to another part of the globe. Because of this broad functionality they are challenging to investigate under natural environments. Some of the orca populations live near the shoreline while most of them live beyond areas that researchers can easily survey.
There is also the fact that orcas spend a lot of time far under the water surface, and thus there are not too many encounters for direct observations. There is improvement in satellite tags, underwater drones, and so on, which the organization has used, but these still have limitations in monitoring the movement of orcas continuously.
This renders the observation of the orca daily activities and movements across expansive areas and beyond the anaerobic zone challenging, thereby resulting in key knowledge gaps pertaining to the orca migration and interactions with other marine species.
The Unknowns of Orca Communication
One of the other mysteries which are associated with orcas is how they communicate with each other. The orcas are interactional animals that have nineteen different types of vocalization that include clicks, whistles, and pulse calls that the pod members use to communicate.
Still, more information about the organization of their vocalizations and, very often, the meaning of a number of those sounds is unclear. It was also found that there are dialects among the different pods, but the structure and function of such pods’ communication is still unknown.
This is due to the fact that orcas occupy rather complex and variable surroundings, which means that the decoding of their signals in real time is rather problematic.
We can only guess on how and what exactly orcas use vocalization for, let alone start to comprehend the myriad uses such as navigation or simply bonding. Other researchers, however, think that even killer whales can have had cultural abilities because the various groups have different dialects, passed down over generations.
The Need for Conservation and More Research
Even though we have learned a lot about the orca life still many questions are unanswered. Another drawback of the case is that the threats of the environment that is home to orcas are on the rise.
Their natural environment is affected through pollution, global warming, and noise pollution from the activities of ship and naval forces, which also poses challenges to the methods that need to be employed in researching these animals.
It is very important to conserve orca so as to prevent their extinction, besides enhancing the understanding of the world on these animals. With more advanced and better equipment being used in research and more money being spent on the conservation efforts, perhaps one day we too will learn everything there is to know about these incredible creatures.
Still, before then, the orcas will remain capturing the imaginations of the public with their brains, grace, and elegance.
ASH CK