Do orcas kill great white sharks?


This 30 July 2018 video from South Africa says about itself:

How Would Orca Attack And Kill A Great White? | Air Jaws: The Hunted | SHARK WEEK 2018

Great white sharks have been found washed up on beaches after being attacked and killed. Are these killings the work of orca? And how would orca hunt down a great white?

A white shark’s acute sense of smell is legendary, allowing it to detect a potential meal several miles away — and giving pause to those of us who work and play in the ocean. But now humans can sniff them out as well, thanks to a collaboration between researchers from UC Santa Barbara and the U.S. Geological Survey, with colleagues from California State University Long Beach (CSULB) and Central Michigan University (CMU). Through developments in environmental DNA (eDNA), scientists — and soon, perhaps, any curious individual — can determine if white sharks have been nearby: here.

Sharks have always struck at the heart of people’s most primal fears of the ocean. Cue: JAWS theme song. However, a new study led by LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences Assistant Professor Stephen Midway shows that although the number of shark attacks has increased over time, the rate of attack is low and the risk of being attacked by a shark is highly variable across the globe. Midway and his collaborators conducted the first statistical analysis of shark attacks worldwide using data collected over a 55-year period from 1960 to 2015 from the International Shark Attack File housed in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida: here.

2 thoughts on “Do orcas kill great white sharks?

  1. Pingback: Megalodon sharks, film fiction and reality | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  2. Pingback: Great white sharks scared of killer whales | Dear Kitty. Some blog

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