The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

I'm bellowing and splashing because you make me sick!

Some scientists (Robert L. Pitman and John W. Durban, to name a few) were cruising Antarctic waters. They were looking for killer whales, a.k.a. orcas.* (Why don't they invite me? I love this stuff.) The researchers wished to document a crafty behavior seen among some seal-eating orcas, in which they team up to knock seals off ice floes. Up to seven orcas swim in a row to make a wave big enough to tip the ice, and wash the seal off. Cool, if you're not a seal.
 

One morning the scientists chugged up to ten orcas and found them in some kind of splashy muddle with a couple much-larger humpback whales. Bellowing like crazy, the humpbacks were whacking the water's surface with flippers and tails. The orcas were milling around. Then they moved on. The researchers guessed the orcas might have been checking to see if the humpbacks could be weak enough to attack. But when they looked at their video, they noticed a Weddell seal in the melee, between the humpbacks, and wondered if the orcas had been after the seal.

The scientists pursued the pod of orcas, who soon spotted a crabeater seal relaxing on an ice floe. Oho! Inconsiderately, the orcas generated a wave which broke the floe into pieces. The seal, “distraught,” was now on a much tinier floe. Before the orcas could make their next move, the same humpbacks appeared. Again with the bellowing and splashing! As Pitman and Durban recount in the November 2009 Natural History the orcas “seemed annoyed,” and took off without harassing the seal further. Hmm, “mobbing behavior,” the researchers concluded. Interesting.

Next week they were spying on a different batch of orcas, attacking a different Weddell seal on a different ice floe, when who should appear but a different pair of humpbacks. The orcas had actually knocked the seal into the water, but before they could grab it, the seal swam toward the humpbacks. When it got to the closest one, the humpback rolled onto its back in such a way that the seal was swept up onto the humpback's chest. The humpback arched its body to lift the seal above the water, nudging it with a flipper so it didn't slide off. “Moments later, the seal scrambled off and swam to the safety of a nearby ice floe.” A bigger one, I presume.

Pitman and Durban changed their speculation from “mobbing behavior” to “maternal behavior.” They refer to “allomaternal care.” They go on say that while this is called instinct when it's seen in a whale, when a human does it “we call it compassion.... But sometimes the distinction isn't all that clear.”

My guess is that yes, there was compassion. The humpbacks felt sorry for terrified seals. But maybe they also disapproved of the orcas' behavior. They sound outraged. Buncha violent creeps terrorizing pipsqueaks. Can't someone relax on some ice without you guys ruining everything? You make me feel like bellowing! Put that pinniped down! Why don't you pick on someone your own size? Bite this!

This suggestion certainly leaves me open to charges of anthropomorphism. But the outrage people feel when they see bullies picking on a weakling doesn't necessarily arise from the most abstractly intellectual workings of our fabulous neocortex. Like compassion, maybe it's more visceral than that. Maybe it comes from the bottom of the heart.

                                                                                                
(Photograph by Jerzy Strzelecki.)

*Orcinus orca (Linnaeus). People have various views on “killer whale” versus “orca.” Is it calumny to call them killers? Is it sentimental PC-ishness to call them orcas? (Are you calling Linnaeus PC?) This article called them killer whales. I use both terms. Mostly orca, because it's shorter.

The Seal of Disapproval

I am not a patient person. In wilderness settings, where my significant other likes to stand and gaze at the natural beauty all around, I want to explore, walk, clamber up things, turn things over, scurry and sniff. I can't repose the way he can. I would take the view that we just have two different ways of taking things in, each good, except for the fact that my impatience makes it hard for me to wait out wildlife. When some alarmed creature dives down a burrow, into a nest hole, or behind a branch, I'd like wait until it re-emerges. Or I'd like to do as many predators do: select a concealed vantage point, and wait until creatures who have no real wish to meet me come wandering along without a clue. But I can almost never bear to be still long enough.

One April day, I went to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve on the coast of San Mateo County, California, to examine the tidepools. The tide tables showed there would be an exceptionally low tide early in the morning on a weekday. As I hoped, there was no crowd. It was so early that no ranger was on duty to put out traffic cones to warn people away from the harbor seal rookery.

Staying inland, on the sand, I walked south until I was past the rookery, where the seals and their pups lie near the water. I went out on the rocks, near the edge where waves lash the water. As I crouched, peering into a tidepool, I looked up and saw a seal sticking its head out of the water, looking at me. I got up and walked south to another tidepool, observed by the seal. It swam along slowly, keeping its head up so it could see me. I went to another tidepool, and another, and every time I looked up the seal was staring, swimming south to keep me under scrutiny. Okay, they're smart animals, and I'm kind of weird. Why wouldn't it be curious?

Coming to a wide channel that had been drained by the retreating tide, I was amazed to see an abalone lying in the middle of the channel, out of water, upside down and motionless. There were no people out there who might have turned it over, and I couldn't think what else might have done it. Maybe it had been making a daring abalone traverse from one rock to another and suddenly been struck by a wave carrying a log or a boulder which knocked it loose. Or maybe it was dead, and had just relaxed its grip as it died. That was a grim idea, but it suddenly seemed the most likely. I turned it right side up, half in and half out of the water in a small pool. It was still motionless.

Here was a test of my ability to be patient. I wanted so badly to see if this abalone was alive, and I forced myself to sit and wait quietly. I would be still for five minutes. I didn't move, but in my head I fidgeted: silently I counted the seconds. After I had counted two minutes, a small wave swirled around the abalone. I almost thought it shifted a bit. But that might have been my imagination.

In the water, other creatures were moving. A purple sea urchin waved its spines and feet busily. A starfish the size of a dime began traveling along a frond of seaweed. A tidepool Johnny (a fish, also called a sculpin) scudded across the sand. Hermit crabs, far more impatient than me, bustled around with gesticulating antennae.

After I hit the five-minute count, I pushed the abalone with my finger. It was gripping the rock so firmly I couldn't shift it at all. It was alive. So that was good news about the abalone. I stood up and saw that no one was watching. I sat still for so long I bored the seal. That was good news about me.