Gotta see this... Dolphin eaten by Jaws

[Superman]

Wow

While some species of dolphin are known to chase sharks away, or kill them; what happens when the shark is the size of Jaws?

[The Spartan]

Look more closely. That's a seal, not a dolphin.

Great Whites are known, in certain areas with particular underwater topographies, to go airborne like this hunting seals.

To my knowledge, no shark species is consistently successful when trying to eat dolphins.

As a side note, Great Whites do hunt dolphins. So, next time you're at Sea World watching Shamu, just remember that if you put the dolphin tank in there with her, it would be a bloodbath.

[Xenophobe3691]

Um, Shamu is an Orca. Technically also a dolphin.

[The Spartan]

My bad. I was thinking orca but for reasons I can't explain typed great white.

Well, now don't I feel really stupid.

[Stofsk]

Um, Shamu is an Orca. Technically also a dolphin.

So? It would still be a bloodbath.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Yes, that's a seal. For that matter, I'm almost positive I've seen that particular footage on the National Geographic channel.

[Xenophobe3691]

Um, Shamu is an Orca. Technically also a dolphin.

So? It would still be a bloodbath.

Then I'm utterly confused. Why would an orca go after a dolphin? I thought they were too big for them, and that Orcas preferred smaller food.

[Stofsk]

Um, Shamu is an Orca. Technically also a dolphin.

So? It would still be a bloodbath.

Then I'm utterly confused. Why would an orca go after a dolphin? I thought they were too big for them, and that Orcas preferred smaller food.

I'm confused too. I thought we were talking about Orca vs Shark.

Nevermind, I was making a funny. Or trying to.

[Lagmonster]

And I read the thread title as "Dolphin eaten by Jews", which in my flu-addled state conjured up pictures on sub-nautical orthodox rabbis slooping through the dark waters, their beards alert to sense any movement in the shallows above.

I couldn't actually tell if the target was a seal or a dolphin or a hefty bag filled with meat, but that was one spectaularly scary display of predator behaviour. I am a landlubber. If necessary I will become a pilot simply so I can get even further from sometimes-creepy sometimes-slimy sometimes-scary marine monsters.

[raptor3x]

Then I'm utterly confused. Why would an orca go after a dolphin? I thought they were too big for them, and that Orcas preferred smaller food.

There was a special on Discovery a while back where a pod of Orcas took down a young Blue Whale. It was insane.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Um, Shamu is an Orca. Technically also a dolphin.

So? It would still be a bloodbath.

Then I'm utterly confused. Why would an orca go after a dolphin? I thought they were too big for them, and that Orcas preferred smaller food.

Orca will go after anything they can catch and that they're in the mood for, be they sea-birds, seals, dolphins, sharks, unwary polar bears, and large whales. Against a pack of orca, a group of dolphins typically stands little or no chance, and the orca will split off the weakest or youngest members of a group of dolphins and then kill it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Firstly, it is a Great White against a seal, so the Orca and lump-o-meat talk is put to rest now

Yes, that's a seal. For that matter, I'm almost positive I've seen that particular footage on the National Geographic channel.

Secondly, I highly doubt that. This was taken from Planet Earth which is a BBC project over the best part of a decade in the making. This is the first, and only time, you will see a Great White nail a seal that way and with such detail thanks to the HD video.

[Superman]

Then I'm utterly confused. Why would an orca go after a dolphin? I thought they were too big for them, and that Orcas preferred smaller food.

There was a special on Discovery a while back where a pod of Orcas took down a young Blue Whale. It was insane.

Sweet Jebus!

[Pick]

There was a lot of move to call them orca instead of "killer whales" because of environmental PR reasons (which I support.) Nonetheless, they really are killer whales. They're crazy.

[Quadlok]

Then I'm utterly confused. Why would an orca go after a dolphin? I thought they were too big for them, and that Orcas preferred smaller food.

There was a special on Discovery a while back where a pod of Orcas took down a young Blue Whale. It was insane.

Actually, I think it was a Grey Whale, because its actually pretty typical for the Orca populations along the west coast to hit them as they migrate from their breeding to their feeding grounds.

More on topic, that was either a sub-adult seal or a very big shark.

[Darth Servo]

Back on topic, that is one BIG shark.

[Darth Yoshi]

I remember reading somewhere that orcas are apparently the only creature other than humans who hunt for sport.

[LadyTevar]

Discovery and Animal Planet have both shown shows about the "Jumping Sharks". Somewhere in Aussieland (iirc) there's a series of islands where the seafloor drops sharply not far from land. The sharks swim below in the deep water, coming up from below to hit the seals swimming along the top at the cutoff point.

These sharks build up great speed as they race from the deeps... it's like that scene in Red October where the Big-D goes flying from the sheer speed of its ascent. They hit the seal going at top speed, and the seal's stunned and possibly broken from the collision.

What's really scary is some footage I've seen from the Antartic orcas hunting seals. Not only have those orca learned how to body-surf into the shallows to grab a seal without getting beached, they will play with a seal like a cat with a mouse. They'll toss it into the air, play catch between pod members, play keep-away....

[Styphon]

South Africa, actually... though it's not entirely unheard of for Great Whites to breach elsewhere.

[Omega18]

Orca will go after anything they can catch and that they're in the mood for, be they sea-birds, seals, dolphins, sharks

Specifically Orcas have been documented to deliberately hunt and kill Great White Sharks.
http://www.cnn.com/EARTH/9710/08/whale.vs.shark/

Researchers now believe that the female Orca in the video, actually goes after Great White Sharks on a fairly routine basis.

[Omega18]

Some more data about the Orca attack can be found at the following link.

Earlier that morning, a fisherman spotted two killer whales—rarities around the Farallones—feeding on a sea lion. Several hours later, Pyle heard from the captain of a tourist vessel: “Get out here fast. A killer whale’s got a shark!”

Pyle sped out in his research boat and found the two killer whales, which appeared to be a mother and calf. “The calf was dragging the shark through the water,” Pyle recalls. After five minutes, a chunk of liver popped out of the 10-foot great white shark. As the calf ate the liver, Pyle filmed the sinking carcass with an underwater video camera.

The incident was beyond odd. No one—anywhere—had ever recorded seeing a killer whale attack a great white. And then something even stranger happened: The sharks of the Farallones vanished...

Whether the Farallon sharks recognized the killer whales by sight or by sound, the presence of the whales did appear to trigger their hasty exodus. Humans fear the great white shark as the ultimate predator; the sharks may perceive their rank differently.

When white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) first appeared 11 million years ago, they shared the seas with Carcharodon megalodon, the 50-foot-long, submarine version of T. rex that ate baleen whales for lunch. The fossil record suggests ancestral white sharks avoided areas populated by their supersized relatives.

By 2.5 million years ago, large, orcalike dolphins appeared, and C. megalodon died out. Some paleontologists think this was no coincidence: The ancestors of today’s killer whales may have outcompeted C. megalodon for the top spot on the oceanic food chain. Perhaps the white shark survived because it was less specialized than C. megalodon. Or maybe it survived because it dodged large, dangerous dolphins as assiduously as it had always avoided C. megalodon.

But evasive action doesn’t always work. Three years after the mysterious 1997 attack in the Farollones, a killer whale most likely struck again.

The whale was sighted in November at virtually the same spot as the first attack. “It had a big chunk of white flesh in its mouth,” says Pyle. “Yet there was very little blood in the water, so it probably wasn’t eating a marine mammal.” By the time Pyle arrived, gulls had gobbled every tidbit large enough for DNA analysis. Afterward, just as in 1997, the white sharks disappeared.

http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/pri ... icleID=991

[Sonnenburg]

Researchers now believe that the female Orca in the video, actually goes after Great White Sharks on a fairly routine basis.

Maybe it's the size of the video on my screen, but it could have been eating Big Foot for all I could see.

But on the main post, if that were a dolphin (which obviously it isn't), that shark would have to be pretty monstrous, right? I mean, most of the critter's inside the mouth when it comes up; it'd be what, thirty feet long? Maybe more?

[King Kong]

Maybe it's the size of the video on my screen, but it could have been eating Big Foot for all I could see.

If you look closely when the shark's mouth is about to hit the water, you can see that the animal has two (separated) hind flippers, rather than the fluke of a dolphin.

But on the main post, if that were a dolphin (which obviously it isn't), that shark would have to be pretty monstrous, right?

IIRC, adult dolphins are around 12 ft. long, so from eyeballing the picture when the shark is in midair and the seal is extended relatively straight outwards: the shark would be around 50 ft. long (again, if the prey was actually a dolphin). That's rather large.

Very cool video, Superman. I need my nature documentary fix, and the new Mountain Dew ads just don't cut it.

[Sonnenburg]

Maybe it's the size of the video on my screen, but it could have been eating Big Foot for all I could see.

If you look closely when the shark's mouth is about to hit the water, you can see that the animal has two (separated) hind flippers, rather than the fluke of a dolphin.

I was referring to the video of the killer whale eating the great white.

[Shinova]

The article says the Great White was about 10 feet. Don't they often go to around 22 feet?