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.

Me next! Me next!

Doug Bertran, a filmmaker who made Orca Killing School, told a story after the showing at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City. This is the film about which the program cautions, “Warning: violent animal scenes.”

He was at Peninsula Valdez, Argentina, filming some orcas who've perfected a trick of lurking offshore at high tide and then suddenly shooting up onto the beach to grab a sea lion. In order to take the sea lions by surprise, the orcas don't echolocate (which creates tell-tale clicking sounds). They rely on hearing to detect their prey. Bertran's assistant was setting up a heavy piece of photographic equipment in the shallows. It occurred to no one that the sound of the eighty-pound device scraping against the beach pebbles might be a lot like the sound of a tasty sea lion pup scraping against the beach pebbles. Suddenly the assistant looked up into the faces of five orcas. They'd hurtled up for a look.

After viewing him, the orcas hurled themselves back into deeper water.

“I shot it,” said Bertran happily. It wasn't in the film, though. Is it because the sight of a photographer's assistant not being eaten lacks drama? No, according to an interview Bertran gave to The Union, it's because local authorities don't want ecotourists to get ideas.

Rules for killer whales

From the excellent documentary Saving Luna, which is about a lost young killer whale that took up residence in Nootka Sound, my favorite quote is a plea to Luna: “Ignore that float plane. Good whales don't play with float planes.”

A Flock of Little Brown Jobbies Were Hopping Among the Bones of a Big Dead Job

Sometimes people get impatient when you try to identify a species. White-crowned sparrow or white-throated sparrow, really, what's the difference?

To a sparrow looking for love, all the difference in the world. Even for humans, it can be important.

While reading Red Arctic, by John McCannon, I came across a story demonstrating the value of careful taxonomy.

It seems that in October 1937 urgent telegrams arrived in Moscow with the news that G. G. Petrov and his men had found the complete skeleton of a woolly mammoth on Wrangel Island, an extremely chilly place in the Arctic Ocean.

Petrov was the head of the Wrangel station of Glavsevmorput, a then-powerful Soviet governmental agency. Petrov and his Communist Party organizer, I. V. Shuvalov, assured everyone that the skeleton was in perfect condition.

A complete mammoth skeleton was huge news in those days – a coup for Soviet science -- and the Zoological Museum and the Academy of Sciences in Moscow fought over which would get it. An expedition was organized to recover the skeleton.

But it was a fierce winter and most ships were trapped in ice. It wasn't until 1938 that the costly expedition made it to Wrangel, where they found that the skeleton was indeed in perfect shape, which enabled them to note that it was the complete skeleton of a beached whale. Not a mammoth. Rrr.

Mammoths, like elephants, had no bones in their trunks, so their skulls wouldn't be as distinctive as you might guess at first. The skeletons of many whales feature long curved bones that resemble tusks.

Photo by John Hritz.

These were difficult times in the Soviet Union, the years of the Great Purge, and it was felt necessary to assign blame and punishment. The NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) investigated Petrov and Shuvalov, found them to be evil “wreckers” of the Soviet state and had them both shot.

You see my point. In the adult white-throated sparrow, look for the yellow spot between the eye and the bill.

We're back! We're starving!

In the summer wildfires, what would the condors do? When flames and smoke tore through their Ventana Wilderness sanctuary, how many would survive?

These California condors were raised in captivity. Some grew up in large aviaries with two-parent families, and others were fed by condor puppets and raised in condor playgroups (most unnatural for a species in which every child is an only child and neighbors never drop by for a cup of carrion). All were introduced into the wild without the benefits of the ancient condor culture, passing through release pens, decked with electronic transmitters, monitored by worried biologists.

When fire hit, the Coast Guard airlifted out seven teenaged birds and their guidance counselor (a somewhat older and more experienced bird) who were in an aviary on the sanctuary awaiting release. But 43 birds were on the loose, and no one knew how they were doing. Nor could the biologists get in to the sanctuary. Usually the birds' wild food is supplemented by government handouts of roadkilled deer and stillborn calves, but in this time of trial they had to go without. (They get dead rats too. For all I know they get government cheese.)

No venison, no beef? No worries. Instead of sticking around and hosing down their homes in a desperate attempt to save their dwellings, the condors went to the coast and had the seafood platter. They flew to Big Sur and lunched on a decayed sea lion and a dead whale. They didn't go home until the fires were out and the yellow tape was down.

They knew the terrain, because this wasn't the first time they'd been to the coast. The sanctuary is inland, but ever since the condors were reintroduced, “we noticed the birds starting to really home in on the coast more and more,” senior biologist Joe Burnett said recently at the SF Zoo. “We didn't realize the historical significance of it till we started looking thorough the notes.” There hadn't been condors in Big Sur for more than a hundred years.

The excellent to-hell-with-this-let's-go-to-the-beach survival tactics adopted by these condors show the value of exploration. These birds knew their options.

If you are ever basking on a sandy beach, or lying on the cliff at Esalen, and you are lucky enough to see a condor drifting above, looking down at you thoughtfully, think of this inspirational tale. Do not focus on the idea that a giant vulture has you in its sights. Remember, they only eat dead things. Be supportive; be safe. Wave!

Let's Lurk Behind these Ecotourists

It's hard work being high on the food chain, and predators are always looking for labor-saving ways to catch prey. In national parks in Kenya, the lions have not only gotten blasé about trucks full of ecotourists, they've started to use them as cover. They'll sneak around behind a vehicle and then rush out to lunge at a wildebeest. Imagine you're the wildebeest – one minute you're making sure they get your good profile, and the next minute you're running for your life.

In the Canadian Pacific, biologist Alexandra Morton was observing killer whales. She was disconcerted by the way one of them, Kwatsi, kept surfacing directly behind her boat. “No matter how I tried to alter my course, his 5-foot fin stayed right behind my engine. After a while I realized what he was doing: Kwatsi was using my boat and its engine noise as a moving hunting blind.”

Great minds think alike. “These humans mean me no harm. They are friendly! Friends help friends catch dinner.”

I performed a similar function once, without actually being a human shield. Driving across Florida, I pulled over to eat lunch at a picnic table, and tossed crumbs from my sandwich to minnow-sized fish in the waterway next to the road. The tiny fish were thrilled with the crumbs and mobbed them enthusiastically. As I gazed at them I heard a small clomp! and then another clomp! Two minuscule alligators had cruised up, disguised as minuscule floating logs, and were snapping up the fish I had lured to their doom. Oh yeah, they call this road Alligator Alley.

To be fair, I should have thrown the fish an alligator purse. They could have nibbled on it after it decayed a bit. But I didn't have an alligator purse. That's how it is. You try to pack everything, and you pack all this stuff you never use, and then the one thing you don't pack, you wish you had. It's hard to be a responsible ecotourist.