Marine Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 21, 2023

Lolita, the 2nd-oldest orca in captivity, who was set to be released to the wild, has died

Editor's note: This story was originally published on April 4, 2023, but was updated on Aug. 21 after Lolita died. Miami Seaquarium's star orca, Lolita, who has spent more than 50 years in captivity, died on Aug. 19. She was set to bid adieu to her tiny tank in Florida...

Sep 27, 2023

Opportunistic orcas have developed a new feeding behavior that appears to be killing them

A record number of orcas have died this year after snacking on fish hauled up by commercial trawlers in Alaska but then getting entangled in fishing gear, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Fishers have linked the increase in mortality to a new behavior, in which orcas...

Sep 29, 2023

Scientists investigate mysterious case of orca that swallowed 7 sea otters whole

Scientists in Russia discovered seven perfectly intact sea otters in the belly of a beached orca, according to a new study. The doomed killer whale was found far from its normal hunting grounds, raising the question of what it was doing there. The female orca (Orcinus orca) was found in...

Oct 6, 2023

Orcas are harassing and playing with baby porpoises in deadly game that has lasted 60 years

Orcas have been harassing and toying with porpoises in the Salish Sea for 60 years, often to the point of killing them, but never eating them. Now, researchers think they know why. The perplexing behavior, dubbed phocoenacide or porpicide, often involves several orcas (Orcinus orca) tossing porpoises (Phocoenidae) around for...

Oct 21, 2023

Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

A mysterious population of orcas said to have hunted alongside Indigenous Australian whalers for millennia and European whalers for decades appears to be extinct, genetic analysis has revealed. The coastal Thaua people, part of the Yuin nation, would sing to the beowas (orcas) as they hunted baleen whales together for...

Oct 22, 2023

Orcas are learning terrifying new behaviors. Are they getting smarter?

In March 2019, researchers off the coast of southwestern Australia witnessed a gruesome scene: a dozen orcas ganging up on one of the biggest creatures on Earth to kill it. The orcas devoured huge chunks of flesh from the flanks of an adult blue whale, which died an hour later....

Oct 22, 2023

11 ways orcas show their terrifying intelligence

Orcas are one of the most successful species in the seas, reigning at the top of the food chain in every ocean. And one of the reasons they are so successful is simple: they're really, really clever. Orcas (Orcinus orca) have rich and distinct social lives and have learned a...

Nov 3, 2023

Watch a huge megapod of acrobatic spinner dolphins in incredible, rare video

Rare footage has captured an enormous megapod of dolphins joining together to hunt flying fish in the Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica. The video shows one of the biggest groups of spinner dolphins ever filmed, with thousands banding together in a gathering that extended deep underwater. The event was captured...

Nov 6, 2023

Orcas sink another boat in Europe after a nearly hour-long attack

A pod of orcas has attacked and sunk another boat in southwestern Europe after relentlessly bombarding the vessel and its crew for almost an hour on Halloween. It is the fourth time that orcas from this region's population have sunk a vessel in the last two years. On Oct. 31,...

Nov 17, 2023

Watch dolphins raid crab pots off Australia in never-before-seen footage

Dolphins have learned how to outsmart crab fishers by stealing the bait from their pots — and new footage has captured the unique behavior for the first time. The bottlenose dolphins watch as the crab fishers load their nets with fish and drop them into the ocean off Koombana Bay,...

Nov 29, 2023

Dying orca's final moments after 'desperate' effort to stay afloat captured in 1st of its kind footage

The final moments of an adult orca's life have been recorded in what is believed to be the first footage of its kind. Whale-watchers spotted an orca (Orcinus orca) — a roughly 35-year-old male known to researchers as Hunchy after his hunched back — behaving strangely in waters north of...

Dec 11, 2023

Extremely rare dolphin with thumbs photographed in Greek gulf

A strange dolphin in the Gulf of Corinth has developed intriguing, hook-shaped thumbs carved out of its flippers, photographs show. Researchers with the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute spotted the dolphin on two occasions this summer during boat surveys off the coast of Greece. Despite the unusual appearance of its flippers,...

Jan 22, 2024

Dolphins are 'literally acting like jerks' by beating up baby manatees

Dolphins are mysteriously attacking manatee calves — and this hostile behavior may be a regular occurrence, scientists say. In a study published Jan. 10 in the journal PLOS One, researchers documented 10 aggressive interactions by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) towards Antillean manatee calves (Trichechus manatus manatus), which targeted orphans as...

Feb 9, 2024

Haunting 'mummified dolphin' found on US beach may have been dead for months

Beachgoers in South Carolina recently stumbled upon an eerie, skeleton-like dolphin sprawled across the sand, where it may have been slowly drying out for months. One expert suggests that the animal may have accidentally become stranded after deliberately beaching itself. On Jan. 14, the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network (LMMN) received...

Mar 16, 2011

Mystery Humpback Whale Breeding Ground Discovered?

The endangered humpback whale was once on the brink of extinction due to the whaling practices of the first half of the 20th century. Now, thanks to international protection, their numbers have dramatically increased to about 20,000 whales. But where they all of them went to breed during the winter...