Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) frequently scavenged from the carcasses produced by whalers. This practice became especially prominent with large-scale mechanical whaling in the twentieth century, which provided temporally and spatially clustered floating carcasses associated with loud acoustic signals...
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Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626385 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17148221 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0348 |
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:1626385 2023-05-15T17:53:43+02:00 Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis Whitehead, Hal Reeves, Randall 2005-07-26 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626385 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17148221 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0348 en eng The Royal Society http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626385 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17148221 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0348 © 2005 The Royal Society Research Article Text 2005 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0348 2013-08-31T09:29:36Z Killer whales (Orcinus orca) frequently scavenged from the carcasses produced by whalers. This practice became especially prominent with large-scale mechanical whaling in the twentieth century, which provided temporally and spatially clustered floating carcasses associated with loud acoustic signals. The carcasses were often of species of large whale preferred by killer whales but that normally sink beyond their diving range. In the middle years of the twentieth century floating whaled carcasses were much more abundant than those resulting from natural mortality of whales, and we propose that scavenging killer whales multiplied through diet shifts and reproduction. During the 1970s the numbers of available carcasses fell dramatically with the cessation of most whaling (in contrast to a reasonably stable abundance of living whales), and the scavenging killer whales needed an alternative source of nutrition. Diet shifts may have triggered declines in other prey species, potentially affecting ecosystems, as well as increasing direct predation on living whales. Text Orca Orcinus orca PubMed Central (PMC) Biology Letters 1 4 415 418 |
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English |
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Research Article Whitehead, Hal Reeves, Randall Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis |
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Research Article |
description |
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) frequently scavenged from the carcasses produced by whalers. This practice became especially prominent with large-scale mechanical whaling in the twentieth century, which provided temporally and spatially clustered floating carcasses associated with loud acoustic signals. The carcasses were often of species of large whale preferred by killer whales but that normally sink beyond their diving range. In the middle years of the twentieth century floating whaled carcasses were much more abundant than those resulting from natural mortality of whales, and we propose that scavenging killer whales multiplied through diet shifts and reproduction. During the 1970s the numbers of available carcasses fell dramatically with the cessation of most whaling (in contrast to a reasonably stable abundance of living whales), and the scavenging killer whales needed an alternative source of nutrition. Diet shifts may have triggered declines in other prey species, potentially affecting ecosystems, as well as increasing direct predation on living whales. |
format |
Text |
author |
Whitehead, Hal Reeves, Randall |
author_facet |
Whitehead, Hal Reeves, Randall |
author_sort |
Whitehead, Hal |
title |
Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis |
title_short |
Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis |
title_full |
Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis |
title_fullStr |
Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis |
title_full_unstemmed |
Killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis |
title_sort |
killer whales and whaling: the scavenging hypothesis |
publisher |
The Royal Society |
publishDate |
2005 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626385 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17148221 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0348 |
genre |
Orca Orcinus orca |
genre_facet |
Orca Orcinus orca |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626385 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17148221 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0348 |
op_rights |
© 2005 The Royal Society |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0348 |
container_title |
Biology Letters |
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1 |
container_issue |
4 |
container_start_page |
415 |
op_container_end_page |
418 |
_version_ |
1766161432430247936 |