Orcas begin to target dolphins

KILLER WHALES, or ‘orcas’, visit our shores from time to time but only one pod seems to be resident in Irish waters. 

With just seven surviving members, the pod may be heading for extinction. Food shortages are hardly to blame for this: orcas eat everything from fish and squid to seal pups. Nor is coping with rising ocean temperatures likely to be the problem; recent research in Patagonia has shown how extraordinarily resourceful these highly intelligent mammals are.

Mariano Coscarella and colleagues from the National University of Patagonia, writing in the journal Aquatic Mammals, describe a newly developed co-operative hunting technique used by killer whales off Argentina’s Peninsula Valdes.