It turns out, great white sharks are scared of something, too [View all]

[IronLionZion]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/17/great-white-sharks-are-afraid-orcas-new-study-shows/?utm_term=.c866ed5fabe5



Jaws is afraid of Free Willy.

A new study published in Nature this week demonstrated that when pods of orcas entered an area around South Farallon Island off the coast of San Francisco, the great white sharks in the area cleared out — and didn’t return for months.

No ocean predator is more fearsome in the public imagination than the great white shark, but even they appear to steer clear of orcas, highly intelligent pack hunters that have been observed on rare occasions to attack great whites — and eat their livers.

“On one occasion, we had 17 sharks that we were tracking simultaneously at the island when a group of orcas showed up,” said Salvador Jorgensen of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who led the study that involved Stanford University and Point Blue Conservation Science.

“We were able to see from the data all the sharks leaving the side of the island the orcas had arrived on,” he said, “and within a few hours had vacated the island completely.”

The findings are the result of 27 years of research, but Jorgensen suspected the two predators had been doing this dance for a while.

Orcas will work together to pin them down and eat their livers. This is like some Hannibal Lecter type stuff. They've even learned to use tonic immobility in some cases.