Killer Whales Hunt Blue Whales Using Elbow Drops

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Being apex predators there is literally nothing in the ocean that poses a threat to an orca known more colloquially by its Wu-Tang generator name of The Killer Whale. However, seemingly just to rub this into the the faces of all of the other animals, orca will up and hunt the largest creature on Earth seemingly just because they can.

Just to be clear here, ‘apex predator’ is the word used to describe a creature that it utterly dominant over the ecosystem it inhabits, it is usually used to describe a creature so far up the food-chain it could technically be classed as a machine gun. Killer whales are apex predators.

If you don’t believe us we’d like to point out that killer whales have been known to hunt great white sharks just to eat their liver, we’d swear that that combination of words was a child’s attempt at recreating an Iron Maiden album cover if it wasn’t horrifyingly true and currently causing us to debate flushing notices of surrender down the toilet.

But by far the greatest and most terrifying display of killer whale dominance is the time researchers saw a group of them hunting a blue whale. Now a blue whale isn’t an apex predator per se, however due to its size it’s generally considered to be one because most experts assumed there was no animal on Earth metal enough to try attacking something the size of a house. Enter, the killer fucking whale.

A few years ago group of 30 killer whales were once observed ganging up on a 60ft blue whale, though the blue whale arguable had a massive size advantage, the killer whales had tactics on their side, those tactics being elbow drops and middle finger aimed squarely at the established food-chain. Along with surrounding the blue whale on all sides (so it couldn’t escape) the orcas then began repeatedly diving out of the water to land on the blue whale’s back in what researchers believe was either an attempt to drown it or pay respects to Macho Man Randy Savage.

After 5 hours of harassing and taking bites out of the whale’s flesh, the killer whales decided to leave it alone and swam away, the blue whale, injured but alive, then quickly descended to the depths. But here’s the thing, this isn’t an isolated case, in 2014 a group of orcas were witnessed harassing a blue whale by taking bites out of its tail before leaving it to die. In fact, a quarter of all blue whales ever observed in the wild have scars from orca attacks, while it’s not known how many of these attacks resulted in blue whale deaths, the fact that orcas try in the first place suggests that they’re either somewhat effective or that orcas just don’t give a shit. Either way, that’s pretty terrifying.