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Orca Party · Why We Do What We Do

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You're listening to Why we Do what we Do? Welcome to Why We Do
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what we Do. I am your black and white host, Abraham, and
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I'm you are not quite a whale host. Shame where a psychology podcast.
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We like to talk about what people and animals will sometimes do and why they
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do it, and how they do it and none of the circumstances circumstances under
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which they do it. Said that right, kind of yeah, mostly,
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and yeah, we've covered I mean so many topics. This is just so
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much fun and we just keep going and it's great, and we're here now
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to talk about something that's been happening recently in the news. This is sort
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of a like developing story type story, but also it stretches back further than
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people might think. Yes, and so today we are talking about orca behavior.
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Now. As somebody who grew up in Florida, I have a particular
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fascination with sea life and biology. I was going to be a marine biologist
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before I got into behavior analysis. Well you know, see rolls right down
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the road. I live near the beach. Like I was always kind of
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thought this stuff was really fascinating. But one thing that always kind of put
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me on edge was Orcas because they were so big, sure, and this
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episode didn't do them any favors. I mean, they make them likable,
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but also they're still very scary. Sure, yeah, I can see that.
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And before we get into talking about Orcas, I would like to let
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everyone know if you finish this episode and you like what you heard and you're
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like I would like to support this show, then one thing that you can
1:30
do is you can just subscribe. You can leave a rating and review.
1:34
Those are easy, cheap, relatively not time consuming things that help us out
1:38
and we appreciate them so much, so please go do that. Other things
1:42
that you can do include that you can join us some Patreon where you get
1:45
access to behind the scenes content and nug overall of that. Toward the end.
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You can also pick up some merch at our merch store, which only
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helps us out. We got shirts and beanies and all kinds of things.
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And then of course you can start an organization to help save the Orcas and
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call it why we Do what we do ORCA Saviors or something yeah wwd wwds.
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Yes, And we'll talk more about all of those things at the end
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of today's discussion. And another important thing to note before we get into it.
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So just we're just kind of teasing all the things, all the orca
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things that we'd like to talk about. Is that this episode comes out July
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nineteenth, yes, and so we like to celebrate. And today is National
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hot dog Day, so or a veggie dog day. Go celebrate a veggie
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Doggins said, there you go. It's also a National Daciri Day. Would
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you compare with hot dog Day? I suppose that sounds tasty. It's also
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National Urban Beekeeping Day, so that's fun. Put bees in your apartment.
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Is air conditioning Appreciation Days, which is kind of I think the months of
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June, July, August, and maybe September and much of the United States,
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but you know, yes, yes, yes, yes. Also in
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a surprising a bout of serendipity, synchronicities, all that fun stuff. It
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is Shark Week. Yeah, this is shark week, so you know,
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go protect sharks. In relation to that, I guess is that everybody deserves
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a massage week by a shark. Maybe yeah, yeah, yeah, be
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careful. It's also National zookeeper Week, which is really nice for the folks
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that are taking care of those animals. For those of you who are celebrating
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hot dog Day. It is horse radish month, and some people like to
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pair those. That's a long time to celebrate that condiment. I feel like
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it does feel like you would have those switched. Yeah, you shouldn't.
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It be National hot dog Month and in horse Radish Day. I don't know.
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It's also National Bison Month. Awesome and wild about Wildlife Month, as
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you can tell, because there's a lot about animals. I feel like,
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yeah, in this month and in this episode, we're celebrating all the things.
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So I guess you can go get a hot dog with some horse radish
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in your air conditioning if you are outside, get a Dacris to cool down
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once you come back inside into your air conditioning after you've gotten your massage,
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while Shark Week plays in the background, and then you do some kind of
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activism around bison to protect them from people going to touch them and mauling them.
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Yeah, while hanging out with your bees. Yeah, your bees.
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Don't forget the bees. Get get your bees some Dacris. They might enjoy
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that to some extent. Delis. Yeah, I'm not sure how bees do
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with alcohol in general, but the sugary part of it, they'd be all
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about it. I can almost guarantee that there is a study somewhere where bees
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drank alcohol. That is a good point. I know that that's happened the
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scientists. Scientists some scientists was like, you know what, we should get
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bees drunk and then that turned into a research question. Yes, scientists love
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to get animals drunken high. That is definitely a thing that has happened in
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the past and continues to happen and continues to happen. And speaking of animals
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getting drunken high, we are talking about this amazing, gigantic black and white
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creature that lives in the ocean that you've seen on the news that was the
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star of a movie called Free Willie and a documentary called Blackfish. And these
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are the illustrious orcas. Yes, so in this episode we are going to
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you figure out what hats, burping, gray white sharks, and menopause all
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have in common. To love that and this is partially inspired by the fact
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that orcas have been in the news a lot lately because in the past few
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years they've been attacking boats and it made us wonder about other orca behaviors and
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the boat attacking behavior and what does orca behavior actually look like? Yeah,
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so what you're going to discover in this episode, I think is that orcas
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are really complex and unique social creatures. And I had a lot of fun
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putting the notes together for this one, because I know, you think you
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know some things and then you learn the whole bunch of new things and it
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changes your worldview. It's wonderful, absolutely, and I do think this one
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is going to be on the shorter end just because I think there's fairly straightforward.
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We know the things that we know, and there's a lot that we
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unfortunately don't know. But it'll be interesting and fun to unpack these because there's
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a lot of new stuff in here for me, and I always love learning
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new things. That's why I like to host a podcast. Yeah, it's
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why we do what we beautiful. We didn't we said the thing. Let's
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go in and dive in a little bit of background about these these majestic creatures.
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Now, the killer whale, the Orcanus orca, is a toothed whale
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species that is actually more closely related to dolphins and other whale species, and
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if sometimes referred to as the blackfish or as grampus, though grampus is not
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used quite as often, so it's actually a dolphin and not a whale,
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which I think is really kind of fascinating, and that's mind blowing fact number
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one. Orca whales are not whales. Yes, yeah, exactly right.
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So the term orcanus means the kingdom of the dead actually, so that's in
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their name, the Orcanus orca kingdom of the dead and there which is kind
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of crazy, so crazy, so scary. So for those unfamiliar with the
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species there are characterized by their black and white patterning, which is what I
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was describing as why I'm your black and white host, which is especially helpful
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for hiding in the ocean. Their dorsal or back patterning is a deep black
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that is very very black, while their ventral part of their body, which
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is their belly, is a bright white, and this actually serves to make
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them difficult to see from above because in contrast with the water on the ocean
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floor, having them be black means it's difficult to see them, and then
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from below it's difficult to see them because of the white contrasting against the bright
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white that is the surface of the ocean and the sky and the sun and
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that sort of thing. So it's kind of almost like a natural bit of
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camouflage in a way, right, which is you know, really fascinating to
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think of something so large having camouflage. I think that's really what kind of
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unique thing. Now, there are some orcas that are classified as a type
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CE type of patterning that have gray scaling which is slightly different than what you
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are used to or what you normally see, and they look really really cool
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when you can look them up and see them. It's it's a very unique
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look. It's kind of jarring if you're not if you're used to the kind
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of black and white patterning that you see with orcas already. And then you
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know, one of the things that always strikes me is they have the sort
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of one of the white spots that's kind of around where their eyes are.
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It almost kind of looks like they're like cut outs for eyes. If you
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feel like they're wearing a big black mask or something that happens to cover their
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whole body, yeah, cowl if you will. Yeah, it's they're really
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they're really cool looking. Yeah. Now regarding their size, they arrange anywhere
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from twenty to twenty six feet in length, which is around oh seven to
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nine ish meters for our metric friends, and they can weigh up to six
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point six short tons or American tons. Yeah you will, so over twelve
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thousand pounds. I learned something during this episode that there are short tons and
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long tons. Huh, who knew? Yeah, didn't like that. They
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also have really good eyesight above and below water. They have great hearing in
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a good sense of touch, so they're incredibly sensitive creatures as well, and
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they have they have an incredibly sophisticated echolocation sense even compared to other dolphin and
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whale species. So they are essentially primed to be able to be the best
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hunters of the ocean. That they're set up to have really great touch,
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really great eyesight, really great echolocation, really great hearing. I mean,
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everything works really well for them. Yeah, and most of the ecosystems where
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they exist, they seem to be apex predators, meaning that nothing hunts them.
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They hunt everything else that even includes sharks for a reason we'll get into
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a little bit later. Yeah, but yeah, they are they're huge,
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they're fast, they're very smart. They're very well equipped to dispatch with foes
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and food alike. Very quickly. Yes, So they have evolved to fill
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a niche very particular, a niche very very well. And so they are
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really not there's not a lot of matches for an orca out in the water
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when you're out there, right, So most of the species lives in the
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southern Ocean where the water is cooler and dense with other species that they hunt,
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including seals and penguins. That's mostly that's their primary food source. They
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have a wide range in terms of geographic location compared to other species. However,
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what we find is that they are they are actually found all over the
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world, not just colder waters, but mostly colder waters is where they are,
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like, that's where you're going to find them. Majority of these the
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pods that exist, so as we're saying, because they are these expert hunters
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and these apex predators, they are sometimes called the wolves of the sea because
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of how they hunt, and for those who are familiar with wolves, wolves
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hunt in packs, and so orcas will often hunt in these pods and they
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can swim at about thirty five miles per hour in these little packs that they
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hunt in, and their techniques include a variety of really interesting behaviors such as
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beaching themselves and their prey safe haven. They'll go up onto beaches like they'll
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they'll even chase their prey onto beaches because oftentimes the prey will think, like,
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just get out of the water and then it'll be fine, and then
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the orca just comes right out of the water with them, which is got
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to be horrifying. Imagine like being chased by something that's only in the water.
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You get up on land and you're like, good, I'm safe,
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and it walks out of the water after you, like no, thanks,
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Yeah, exactly, that's what this thun does. Yes, And I'll actually
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I have a little bit more on that. I hope I remember to come
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back to. They also will circle as surround their prey. And then because
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we mentioned they often swim in colder waters and they are often one of the
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things they really like to eat as seals is they'll break up ice sheets where
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the prey may be hiding, so that then sort of forced them into the
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water. There are some really cool videos that you can see of a pack
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of orcas chasing this one seal and the seal is on like kind of an
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ice sheet like in the Arctic, and you see these four orcas swim in
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a line underneath the sheet and just wreck the entire sheet. They just break
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it up into small chunk so the seal basically has nowhere to go but into
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the water where they're at. It's really impressive to watch. It's like an
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aerial view of it, and it looks really really I mean, it's it's
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nature, so you know, it's brutal, but it is a really really
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interesting thing to see these four orcas together just say hey, guys, okay,
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we're gonna we're gonna mess this up. Here we go and just like
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just demolish the sheet that the seals on. Wow, it's scary. I
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mean, it's it's it's scary to watch, you go. I'm so glad
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that they don't eat humans because if they did, we wouldn't have we wouldn't
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stand a chance. There's no way. Yeah, which we'll get to you
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later. Now. There are about fifty thousand orcas worldwide according to best estimates,
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and with more recent conservation efforts, it is expected that the population will
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continue to climb, which is, you know, that's one thing that we're
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going to come back to see world multiple times. One thing that see World
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did was they brought a lot of awareness to orcas that exist in the wild
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and conservation efforts, and they kind of helped lead a lot of charges around
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that and helped with that kind of movement towards building that population. Again.
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Yeah, it's controversial place for sure, but I think looking at it's one
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of those things that just requires a nuanced look for all these things that it
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did. Yes, but yeah, I mean fifty thousand maybe sounds like a
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lot, but for a species, that is a very very low number.
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Yes, if you can imagine there's being only fifty thousand humans in the world,
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that would be like it would look like the apocalypse here because there would
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be so few people left. Yeah, that would be half of Daytona.
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There you go, and everybody wants to save half of Daytona at least half.
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At least half. The other half can go kick rocks. All right,
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Well, we have some orca social media to talk about here in a
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second. But first we're going to feed our listeners to the advertising killer whales.
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Okay, let's talk about the influencers of the animal world the orca.
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Yes, so we've talked about them being scary, but orcas are incredibly smart,
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and they have really complex behavior repertoires that are worth kind of diving into.
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And for the purposes of this episode, that's what we're gonna focus on.
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We're gonna focus on all these different things that orcas do. And one
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of the most important things, the most unique things they do, is they
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engage in a lot of play behavior. Because remember I brought this up earlier.
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They are a dolphin species. They are the largest dolphin species. They
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are not really a whale species, and so one characteristic of a lot of
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dolphin species is they tend to engage. It's really complex social play and orcas
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have of a rye play behaviors. They engage in and they teach their young
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these play behaviors and they really have no functional kind of benefit except for to
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engage in social norms, right like it's like to engage with other members of
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the pods. They don't feed them, They don't really do. I mean,
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they some of the behaviors can kind of like generalize into that, but
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you'll find that some of it's just really kind of like it seems like a
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useless behavior, but it's actually socially important, kind of like TikTok Before we
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go into some examples, a real quick note, when you used to go
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to see world and go to see performances, when if anybody ever did that,
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you went to go see whale shows or dolphin shows or anything like that.
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The tricks that they would engage in were actually behaviors. They were reinforcing
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play behaviors. They were rewarding play behaviors most of the time. And there
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were a lot of different examples of you know, an orca breaching the water
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and then you know, splashing everybody, you know, using their tail to
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splash the crowds and all that. Those were examples of play behaviors that were
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naturally occurring in the orca, a repertoire that they figured out how to reward
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and turn into a shell. Yeah, and I think when we were talking
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about play is thinking about there you'll see other whales and other sea creatures that
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will breach. They basically come jumping and they swim so fast they break the
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surface of the water and they'll jump out of the water and catch some air.
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And most of the time when we see that in animals, when we
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say that this doesn't have a functional purpose for orcas, is because they are
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chasing prey, they are escaping predators, or there's some other like reason for
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them to be doing it. Like that we can sort of link back to
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something that has like immediate survival value in some sense or another. Right.
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I've also seen some whales who do that to protect their young. They'll like
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if they breach, then basically they can they can hide their young on their
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bellies because apparently a thing that they've done, which is kind of cool.
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But these orcas will do it when none of those things that are present.
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They're not avoiding attacks, they're not trying to get food. They seem to
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be doing it just for the sake of doing it, which is kind of
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how we would define play right right, And as you said, that includes
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things like doing these back dives, belly flops, and reaches. Apparently,
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one that they're somewhat known for is burping flowing bubbles, which is really cute,
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and they'll chase each other. They'll do these like fin slaps that sort
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of seem to be like high fives or just bumps that sort of thing,
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fluke lifts and waves, and some other really fun trends. I'll let you
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take the next one. Yeah, So one thing they do is this thing
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called kelping, And what they'll do is they'll gather seaweed and different types of
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kelp and they will drag it around. They'll swim with it on there in
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the notch of their flukes, so they'll swim with it like in they're basically
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like what you would imagine like their armpits or on the back of their necks,
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and if you want to like kind of compare it to human anatomy.
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And that's what they do. They swim around with this stuff kind of like
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like almost like costume jewelry. Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny, it's
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so cute. It's this idea and like it's it's clear that they're doing it
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for fun because they would easily get it off them if they didn't want it
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there, you know, right right, they seem to be trying to keep
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it in place to like wear it for a little while, right. Another
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thing they do is they mate for fun. Orcas similar dolphins have sex for
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fun. Like they're one of the like the dolphin species is the only other
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species on the planet that just has sex for fun. So they do mating.
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They roll, So that's a thing that they'll do. They roll and
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then they also do this thing called spyhopping, and spyhopping is basically they use
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and they generalize us for hunting as well. But basically they just kind of
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if you ever see a video of an orca just popping their head up up
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out of the water just a little bit so their eyeball can see above the
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surface, that's spyhopping. And they'll do that to kind of be like,
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oh, there you are seals, Oh, penguins, there you are value,
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and then they'll go murder all of them for food. How insidious,
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right, So that's what I'm saying. It's like all these behaviors are taught
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as play behaviors, and some of them do turn into functional like survival skills.
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I do see a potential future episode for us called Sex for Fun where
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we talk about this, how do we know that animals are having sex just
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for fun? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, and like which animals do it?
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Uh huh? That would be a fun episode. Literally. Another thing
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that orcas do is foraging, So this is kind of interesting. I didn't
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know that they do this. According to rite in colleagues in twenty seventeen,
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orcus engage in these minor forging behaviors. Does this mean that they're going into
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the forest and getting mushrooms. Of course not, so that's not what they're
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doing. That would be so scary if they did, though, I would
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be I don't know, confused for multiple reasons. But what researchers have found
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is that smaller groups will break off from the larger pod in this exploration for
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food sources. They might dive deeper or swim further away to see if there's
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more available and densely packed food than where their pod currently is. They send
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these little scouting expeditions. But apparently dolphins will also do something similar as this
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sort of scouting thing where because they also tend to travel on these pods.
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Yeah, and so then what they'll do is they'll basically like they'll scout out,
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they'll find like a food source, they'll come back to the pod and
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then bring the entire pod to this new food source. And again, their
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geographical locations are really they have a really wide range, like a specific pod
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will cover quite a lot of ground, but they will kind of stay in
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that same area. They'll return to the area after they've kind of depleted a
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food source. Wow, super interesting. Now they also have really unique social
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structures and unique parenting behaviors. So because they are highly social in nature,
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and I think this is going to be an important point that we come back
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to, especially with the controversies that go along with Sea World. They are
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incredibly social, and this is actually one of the biggest arguments about kind of
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the current behaviors around Sea World and what they were doing. Socialization can occur,
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but it's limited because the tanks are so small and there are only there
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are so few of these animals in those tanks. You know, they consider
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pods between two and fifteen orcas. That's kind of like the general range.
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But much of their social interaction relies heavily on finding food sources. So if
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there are kind of ongoing food sources without having to find them, then that
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eliminates like almost an entire subset of social behavior for them. Sure, and
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most of the pods are matriarchal, so which is really really interesting. The
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older females tend to lead everything. The pods themselves put a lot of emphasis
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on raising calves, so again that's another social set of behaviors that gets eliminated
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if there's only one calf and there's no need to teach the calf's survival if
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it's in captivity. And there are several subgroups within a pod that exchange members
20:15
to aid in breeding, so like multiple pods will get together and they'll switch
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members to be able to help with breeding processes. So super fascinating stuff as
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far as that goes. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, And then thinking of
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them as being organized in these sort of matriarchical societies is kind of unique.
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It feels like not a lot of animal species or organized that way hyenas are
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actually, yeah, but yeah, that's kind of fun. And so now
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getting into I think what is part of the impetus for wanting to do this
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episode in the beginning, which is that orcas seem to pick up fads from
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one another. Yes, so it's clear if you have some scouts and like
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someone comes back and they're like, dude, we found a bunch of fish,
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and then the whole pod goes that way, there's some meaningful communication that's
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happening there. And I'm not saying that it's anywhere near as complex or the
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level that humans are. Maybe it is, but we don't know, and
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there's just there's no definitive evidence to say that it definitely is, but it
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is definitely some kind of functional communication that results in one orca's behavior changing the
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whole pod of orca's behaviors to then like change direction, go find a particular
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set of fish. So if they can do something like that, it does
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stand to reason that we would be able to observe them doing other things like
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picking up these sort of fads or trends in their behaviors among those in a
21:30
pod, or even across some pods where you have those subgroups to sort of
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cross pod lines, if you will. And scientists have actually found that these
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pods might actually have unique cultures within each pod that again extend their play and
21:42
engagement, which then they sort of share with these other pods. And so
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let's let's go through some of the interesting things that they've found in these pod
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cultures, inter pod relations, podcast, more pod words, as many pod
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words that we can put on a podcast, asked, I think podception we're
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all for. So one of the things I found really fascinating, and I
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always find languaging really fascinating, like how dialects and accents and stuff like that
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work, especially being from the South, and how you know it's called soda,
22:15
right, and people say y'all and then everybody else has it wrong.
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I always kind of really appreciate that. And then one of the things they
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found was that pods will have varying communication. The communication can change across the
22:23
regions, and they suggest that pods might actually have unique dialects and accents,
22:30
which makes me laugh so hard thinking about like an Orca, it's got like
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a real Southern accent, like a real deep Southern drawl. It's like,
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hey man, that panguin that I had today was delectable. Wait, like,
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I just want to see an Orca talk like that, And I love
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that idea, right. I heard them sort of describing that in all these
22:52
different pods, you'll hear these sort of clicks and whistles and these sounds that
22:56
they make that it's really unique that they do through their nasal cavity, interestingly,
23:00
which is part of why it has a sort of squealing tone that it
23:03
has. But if they go to another pod, they might hear similar sounds,
23:07
but they have what they described as having an accent to them, just
23:10
as you were saying, And they directly compared it to like regional accents in
23:14
the United States, like a sort of New Yorker accent versus a Southern accent
23:19
sort of thing, which sounds very fun. It's so fun. Another thing
23:23
that they do in these groups is they may share meals, but because they're
23:27
the sort of eating pods, they might also have certain food preferences. So
23:30
for instance, some orcas may prefer salmon or chinook depending on their region.
23:36
And another one will get too is they might instead be passing around something like
23:38
a shark and they'll they'll take a bite and then pass the carcass to the
23:42
next one and they'll take a bite, and they just like they share food
23:45
in this like assembly line buffet thing. Super fascinating. Another thing they found
23:51
was the orcas near British Columbia begin engaging in a behavior called rubbing beaches.
23:55
And they would actually find certain like pebbly beach terrains where they would go and
23:59
they would just rub their bellies along the beach. And it only happened with
24:02
this one particular pod. They didn't they haven't seen this across other pods.
24:04
They found this one group that would like scratch their bellies along the beach like
24:08
almost got scratching post. Yeah right, yeah, So this one's really fun.
24:12
In Puget Sound, a female orca began carrying a dead salmon around on
24:17
her nose. And because these are matriarchical societies, a lot of times the
24:21
sort of lead female in the group will start the trends like she. If
24:25
she starts doing it, then the rest of them will start doing it,
24:26
and so this one was really fun. I believe this was in around nineteen
24:30
ninety six or so that they were observing this in Puget Sound, and there
24:34
was no as far as a gudell and no reason for it. She just
24:37
like put a dead salmon on her head and would just swim around with it.
24:41
And within five to six weeks other orcas from her own pod started also
24:45
carrying around dead salmon on their heads. They just wear them and just swim
24:48
around with them. And then other pods that they would interact to us started
24:51
just wearing dead salmon on their head. So it seemed to be almost like
24:53
a fashion trend that they started doing it. Again, didn't seem to serve
24:57
any additional purpose. They just like salmon on head just from around. They're
25:00
like, hey, I like your salmon had Yeah, it's I thought that
25:03
was so fun. When you told me that, I was like, we
25:06
gotta we have to talk about this. I need to know about this salmon
25:08
hat thing, Yeah, which was just so ridiculous. And the fact that
25:11
it I think, I think it's one thing when it's like, Okay,
25:14
maybe it's like the behavior of a particular organism within the pod and that's that's
25:19
Maybe that's the thing, and like it's just kind of something they observed.
25:22
But the fact that it like developed within the pod, yeah, and generalized
25:26
to other pods makes me so happy. Yeah, that was so great.
25:30
The simple fact of learning by observation is not something you always consistently find in
25:37
a lot of other species. A lot of them need direct experience to learn
25:41
from a particular circumstance. So this is taking learning by observation to a whole
25:47
new level because it's not only learning like an important survival skill. This one
25:49
seems to be learning a nonsense play like skill. Yeah, And it's just
25:55
totally unique. So I just think that's sort of fascinating. Do you think
25:59
that maybe one of the members of the pod saw like the Kentucky Derby and
26:02
was like, humans wear silly hats. We can do that too, Probably,
26:06
Yeah, I hope. So this is something I didn't include the notes,
26:08
But around nineteen ninety nine as well, they found that orcas in the
26:14
New England that were kind of like in the northeast of the United States,
26:17
in those areas where it was a little bit colder, started wearing jinkos and
26:21
wearing backwards red hats and got really into limp biscuit for a minute. Oh
26:26
no, it was a real strange time, which leads us to actually the
26:30
orca's near Spain and Portugal, which is the whole Like you mentioned, this
26:33
was like one of the things that made me want to look at orca behavior
26:37
is these orcas near Spain and Portugal actually started attacking boats, or as Fred
26:41
Durst puts it, they started breaking stuff. And with these attacks increasing over
26:45
the past several weeks, we thought it would be really fun to kind of
26:48
dive in to this particular fad, this new fat around orcas, which is
26:52
these boat attacks. Yeah, and they really hadn't been attacking boats before,
26:56
so this seemed like the reason was making the news is because people were like,
27:02
why is this happening all of a sudden, and why does it keep
27:03
happening, and why is it happening like and these specific places, and that
27:07
seems to be spreading and all that. And so let's hear the advertisers try
27:11
and sell you a boat that may or may not get attacked by orcas.
27:15
Maybe it's an orca proof boat. And then we'll come back and talk about
27:18
what's going on with these boat attacks. Welcome back. If you would like
27:30
orca proofing for your boat, please use the code why we do what we
27:33
do boat safe and you can make sure that the orcas don't reach your hull.
27:38
Yeah, somebody letters somebody, Oh God, but it's worth it.
27:44
It's worth it. The savior hide. Yeah, you know that five percent
27:47
discount that you get from using orca proofing for your halls. So this is
27:52
a this is a question that's been asked, is why the boats. Why
27:56
of all the new fads, does this like kind of new aggressive behavior seem
28:00
to be kind of picking up and on an increasing trend over the last over
28:04
the last few years, even so let's talk about this. And this is
28:07
actually really fascinating. So this is not a new thing. This has been
28:11
happening for the past three years, but it's been increasing over the last several
28:15
weeks at the time of this recording. Yeah, orcas in the Iberian Peninsula
28:18
have been attacking many boats, ramming them and breaking off parts of their boats,
28:22
like their motors and their rudders. And if you know anything about boats,
28:26
these are important for steering and moving if you're in water, if you
28:30
don't have a rudder, and if you don't have a motor, you might
28:33
have a hard time getting around. Sales are great, but most of these
28:36
boats don't have sales. Yeah, you're mostly just floating there. Yes,
28:40
they've had to rescue missions, they've had to send people out to get tow
28:44
boats in like to bring them back in. Yeah. And so when I
28:47
said this is new, what I meant is and the history of relations between
28:49
humans and orcas. They're not known for attacking boats storically, but in the
28:55
last few years this has been happening, and as you said, increasing in
28:57
the last several weeks relative to the data this recording at the time. So
29:02
everyone's sort of wondering, why, why are they breaking these boats, Why
29:04
are they attacking these boats? And at the time that we're recording this,
29:08
no one's really been able to determine what the purpose may be. Scientists really
29:14
haven't been able to figure this out. Doesn't seem like it is related to
29:18
hunting or mating behaviors. There's been several hypotheses that have been floated out unintended
29:23
about what might be going on here. One is that it's been hypothesized that
29:29
this may be a play behavior, and one specific source that I saw suggested
29:33
that it's possible. What they were trying to do is they're trying to hitch
29:37
a ride on the boats, and that's why a lot of the rudders and
29:40
the things are breaking. Is they're trying to bite on some so they can
29:42
get pulled along like a skateboarder holding onto the back of a pickup truck.
29:47
What would you call that skitching? Skitching's skitching? Yeah, yeah, which
29:51
is my favorite orca skitching is my new favorite behavior. I hope it's that
29:53
wholesome and fun. I really do, right, Yeah, So it's possible,
29:59
Like one pothesis is that they're skitching they're trying to catch a ride,
30:02
but many believe this is due to retaliation for traumatization that may have happens to
30:07
one single belonging to a pod. The most interesting part of all of this
30:12
I think is, you know, we know, humans do horrible things and
30:15
all that, and that's not really the interesting part here. The interesting part
30:18
is that we talked about fads and how within pods, within these social structures,
30:23
these orcas will teach these fads to other people. We talked about the
30:26
matriarchal systems and how like the older female in the pods started wearing a dead
30:32
salmon and teaching all this stuff. It appears at orcas in these pods in
30:36
particular, are teaching each other how to attack these boats, and they're getting
30:41
better at it. This is wild. Yes, So at the time of
30:44
this writing, they have sunken three boats, but have encountered at least five
30:48
hundred and five separate vessels in the area since twenty twenty. Just so you
30:52
all know, it's like this is this is how big this thing is.
30:55
The attacks are increasing rapidly over the past several weeks, and there are no
30:59
signs of the slow going down. This is not something that has like they're
31:02
like, okay, it's kind of there's a lull here. It's not really
31:03
happening yet. They're just getting started. They're just getting started. The party
31:07
is just starting. And as we said, because this seems to be learned,
31:10
and they tend to be learned within a group. Observers have been able
31:12
to identify two primary groups who have started to take this on after the initial
31:18
trend began. One pod made up of juveniles and another of varying ages and
31:22
one adult. It does seem to be that it's largely juveniles who are attacking
31:26
these boats, which maybe makes the sketching make more sense, but that is
31:30
something that they're doing, just like we've got going on and the humans.
31:33
So these orcas they're on TikTok, they picked up this boat attack challenge from
31:38
TikTok and so now the adults are involved, it will probably start to die
31:42
down. There'll be less less boat attacks because they don't want to the old
31:48
people around. It's gonna go the way of Facebook, you know how Facebook
31:51
is, So now, yeah, kind of where they all to start.
31:53
The one adult that's involved in this lovingly named White Gladys, which is great
31:57
because orcas are mostly black color pattern. Yeah. White Gladdis maybe the orca
32:02
that started a trend to begin with, and it's currently believed that White Gladdis
32:07
was entangled in a fishing net or some type of or had some type of
32:09
negative counter with a boat. They doesn't believe that these are revenge orcas per
32:14
se, but they're highly protective orcas, so it's not that they're like seeking
32:19
out justice and revenge and retribution. But what they're seeing is kind of this
32:22
danger and they're going nope, not again, we're protecting white Gladdys and the
32:27
juveniles are going on attacking. And so basically what they're saying is the boats
32:30
are a danger to them, so they're getting rid of the danger. And
32:32
I think from like a logical standpoint, that makes sense. Reasonable hypothesis.
32:37
Yeah, probably more evidenced for that than the skitching. But I would love
32:42
it to be the skitching. You know, I really hope it's a skitching
32:44
like that. I hope it's that simple, I really do. Yeah.
32:46
It's currently believed that at least fifteen separate orcas are involved in the attacks,
32:51
and again these are from the two groups above, or about six subgroups across
32:55
those pods, those main pods. But here's an important thing. Remember orcas
33:00
live anywhere from fifty to ninety years, so they're not terribly far off from
33:05
more humans, are right, And so if this behavior continues and as taught
33:09
across pods and to younger generations. This could be something we are seeing for
33:15
a very long time if they just keep attacking people's boats. And I do
33:20
think it's worth pointing out that it doesn't seem like orcas are doing this to
33:23
deliberately hurt humans, partially because, as I heard someone else putting out elsewhere,
33:30
humans would be very easy prey for orcas, Yes, like very easy.
33:35
We can't swim fast, we can't see them coming, we're really bite
33:38
size for them, Like, we're actually pretty much exactly the right size for
33:42
a meal. So if they if they were out there trying to hunt us,
33:45
like they would be very easy for them to do that, and they
33:47
don't. So it doesn't seem like they're trying to do this too specifically harm
33:52
humans, because they would do that thing if they wanted to do that thing.
33:57
I have not, at this point in time, seen any any evidence
34:00
that orcas have ever like decided to eat a human. I think that the
34:05
situations that they have like involved human deaths have been a whole number. There's
34:09
a whole host of reasons. But in each of those situations, especially the
34:13
ones that happen with the trainers at sea, world, like the orcas didn't
34:15
eat them. Yeah, so we're not like a tasty treat for them,
34:19
and which is actually kind of nice to think about that there's a lot of
34:21
animals out in the world that don't want to eat us, right, since
34:24
everything in Florida wants to kill us, all the animals that is, yeah,
34:29
and the politicians, I guess, yeah, alligators, de santists,
34:31
same thing. I think it's worth kind of diving into a little bit of
34:36
science here, and we've shown some of the behavioral science around this, but
34:38
there's a lot to unpack within this. And we are not marine biologists,
34:43
despite the fact that I wanted to be one, because this is a developing
34:45
story. The thing that it comes back to is that scientists cannot agree on
34:50
why this is occurring. They know that behavior gets taught. They know enough
34:53
about orca behaviors to know that they attack, and they work in pods,
34:58
they work in groups. They are the wolves of the sea. We know
35:00
that stuff. We know they're powerful creatures, we know they play, We
35:02
know all of those things, but we don't know why this is happening.
35:07
And from a parsimonious standpoint, it makes sense that an organism can observe another
35:10
and discover new skills in this observational learning piece. But it makes sense,
35:15
but it doesn't happen very often in the animal world. That's what makes kind
35:17
of humans stand out compared to other animals in the world. But I think
35:22
it's just really fascinating right now that like scientists are like, we have no
35:25
idea why this is happening. Yeah, But another thing that we can sort
35:30
of speculate on here that does make sense within the context of how we understand
35:34
the behavior to occur, is that if we think of the hypothesis that perhaps
35:38
what's happening here is that boats are just seen simply as a threat. If
35:43
an orca got tangled up in a net or it's hit by a boat,
35:45
or whatever was the situation that may have triggered this, and then boats immediately
35:51
become symbolically representative of danger. Then it makes sense for that image of a
35:57
boat then to be sort of a generalized que for danger for orcas. They're
36:01
not necessarily distinguishing like that one boat did this, but that boat belongs to
36:07
a class of things that all look very similar that we should now regard as
36:10
being a threat. And it's well within reason to think that an organization that
36:15
can recognize danger, and you know, an organization in the pod in this
36:19
case, a group of animals or individuals, if they can recognize danger,
36:23
then'll do what it can to eliminate that danger. So, given that orcas
36:27
are these apex predators, danger is something that they would not be used to
36:30
and likely would just not tolerate. As soon as there is some kind of
36:34
queue of danger, they're going to organize around eliminating that threat, particularly if
36:38
it's an area where they are currently relying on food, an area for mating,
36:44
an area where they hang out with our other homies, like they're going
36:46
to protect that space. If you want to get into like some of the
36:50
other ways to think about this too, boats, a queue for certain behaviors
36:52
could exist for rewards as well. If there if you're talking about sketching and
36:55
then hey look here there's the like they're scopings. It's like surfers finding those
37:00
tasty waves. Man, Like you know the cues for it, right,
37:04
Like you know the waves that are going to be good and the ones that
37:06
aren't. Like I know that I can hit your ride on this boat,
37:08
and there's sometimes where I can't. And that's kind of another thing to think
37:10
about too, is that basically what's happening is whether these are attacks, these
37:15
are aggressive attacks, or these are play attacks, whatever it is, the
37:19
boats are serving as a queue for this behavior to occur in this particular area.
37:22
And it's not across every single pod. It's across these pods within this
37:27
particular region of the world, right, yeah, again, making it sort
37:30
of these unique almost cultural thing that they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
37:35
it's the fat they're the trend setters. And we'll see if if it
37:37
transfers over. I mean, there's only fifty thousand orcas and the first one
37:40
that makes a viral on TikTok is going to really mess up a lot of
37:44
boats, that's right. But they'll be rolling then in those in those advertiser
37:50
dollars. So hey, and so are we. We have some more other
38:00
interesting sort of tidbits going on here. According to Science focused dot com,
38:05
a single orca would win a fight with a great white shark. Why because
38:08
orcas are bigger, faster, and smarter and they hunt in packs. It's
38:12
kind of difficult to understand why we're so afraid of sharks when these orcas exist.
38:16
They actually scare great white sharks, so you'd think that they should be
38:20
more scary to people, and they are very scary to me, to be
38:22
fair. But one of the things that I saw relevant to this is that,
38:28
yeah, one of the trends is that certain pods will hunt these great
38:32
whites. And as I was saying, the great white sharks tend to their
38:37
loaners, they tend to sort of go out on their own and they you
38:39
know, they basically eat anything that they see rather than working together cooperatively.
38:44
I can say that word orca's work together. As we're saying, they're very
38:47
social, and so they hunt in these pods. Then they'll they'll surround sharks,
38:52
they'll screw with them, you know, toward them a little bit.
38:55
And then I've even one of the thing sources that I found on is they
39:00
were describing, as I mentioned earlier, this thing where if they caught a
39:02
great white, they would like take a bite and pass it to the next
39:06
orca, who'd take a bite and pass it to the next orca. And
39:08
they'd have this they'd share their food, this big sort of cherry festival of
39:13
eating shark guts that they that seemed to be this like social affair and Jared
39:19
food is also kind of a very unique thing that you don't see all that
39:22
often. The animal kingdom accept them on like parents and they're young. Yeah,
39:24
sometimes just like hang out in a group, Sharon Emile is not something
39:29
that you see very often. So that was kind of astonishing, and you
39:30
were saying too, like one of the things they do is they figured out
39:34
basically, like it's not that they're like ramming the sharks and doing that.
39:37
One of the things they figured out how to do is like roll the shark
39:39
over. Oh yeah, that's right, Like they weren't they doing that.
39:42
They were rolling them over and like doing like all kinds of stuff to really
39:45
like to really mess with the sharks. Yeah, they'd force it into sort
39:50
of when the shark got flipped over, it seemed to trigger some kind of
39:53
paralysis like state, making it easy for the orcas to tear into it,
39:58
which seems terrifying from the point of view of the shark. Yeah. Also
40:01
just mean the other thing that I forgot to mention was that they would do
40:06
these things where they would like karate chop the shark basically, so their tails
40:12
if you see them, are flat like a whales. Yes, as you
40:14
imagine them. I mean they lay horizontally, so they would turn them sideways
40:16
and they would like get like an angled dig at the shark and like puncture
40:21
a hole in it. And there was even like I saw some pictures of
40:25
people where they had a shark body that washed up on shore and specifically the
40:30
orcas had taken out the liver. They were like Hannibal Lecter on the shark
40:35
and they were eating their livers, which they apparently really like. Is shark
40:37
livers a thing? This is what I'm saying. They're so scary. Orcas
40:42
are so scary. Yeah, there's a really cool study. Mckeller at All
40:44
in twenty twenty two published a study that focused on using behavioral skills training to
40:49
teach trainers that worked with orca's skills to improve orca attending behavior basically attending to
40:53
a task, attending to a stimulus and stuff like that. And in the
40:57
study, they were actually doing discrete trial training with orcas. They were running
41:01
trial after trial after trial with orcas and getting them to attend to certain queues
41:06
and attend to certain trainers during these training sessions. And we're highly successful during
41:09
this time. Wow. Yeah, that's cool. I've got to ask about
41:13
this one since you put this together, What is going on with orca's experiencing
41:16
menopause. They actually go through a period of menopause, so as they get
41:20
older and they age, they go through similar kind of like reproductive cycles that
41:24
humans do. Their menstrual cycles and all that are a little bit different.
41:28
Their pregnancies are a little bit different and all that. But their mammals and
41:30
they do experience towards the end of their life cycle, they do experience menopause.
41:34
Wow. Yeah, I thought that was super fascinating. They start drinking
41:37
wine and picking out their favorite news anchor host. Watch. Yeah. I
41:43
would imagine that the hot flashes are probably really helpful for like being in cold
41:46
waters. They're probably like, okay with that. Sorry, I don't mean
41:49
that's to be a sexist comment, as mostly joking about people that I know
41:52
who've experienced menopause, and that seems to be a thing that happened. Yes,
41:54
yes, yes it could be anybody. Anybody could get this way,
41:58
That's what I'm saying. So SeaWorld discontinued its orca breeding program as of March
42:04
seventeenth, twenty sixteen. This was followed on the heels of some controversy surrounding
42:09
the death of some trainers as well as the documentary Blackfish that we mentioned,
42:14
and so there was definitely some things that indicated that I mean, as you
42:16
were sort of saying, for orcas, this is like being kept in a
42:20
very small prison where they have almost like they're being kept in solitary confinement because
42:23
they have so little opportunities to interact with others, even though these very highly
42:29
social creatures. So while this may have seemed like a good decision after the
42:31
deaths of trainers, some are concerned that it will severely limit research opportunities to
42:36
learn more about the species because, as we said, although there were these
42:39
considerations around how the orcas were treated also see World did fund these efforts that
42:44
led to research and awareness and generally learning a lot of important things about orcas.
42:50
And so many folks don't realize that SeaWorld is active in many conservation and
42:53
research areas while simultaneously trying to engage in entertainment opportunities. And so I do
43:00
understand the concern about exploitation. I do understand I think the treatment of these
43:04
animals and what that meant for them as a species. I also think it's
43:07
it's just it's not as black and white as the orcas are. It's more
43:13
like a type C orca. It's more of a type C orca. Yeah,
43:15
there's just some grain here because it's like, yeah, we don't have
43:20
to agree with everything that they've done to agree with some of the things that
43:22
they've done, you know what I mean, we don't have to disagree with
43:24
all the things that they've done. To agree with some of the things that
43:27
they've done, we aren't defending C World. Good on them for making change
43:30
because that was something we can hope for, and when we know better,
43:34
we have to do better. So there's just as nuance, you know,
43:37
that maybe missed opportunity for some more learning to happen on our end, and
43:43
that maybe had to come at the sacrifice of them giving up their breeding program,
43:46
which was not something that we should have done anyway. And that's kind
43:49
of like a thing that I wanted to really emphasize here, is that,
43:52
like, you know, the programs that C World. I would argue that
43:55
C World's programs for conservation and some of the work they're doing were better than
43:59
a lot of the other programs, at least like some of the things that
44:01
they were doing and trying to put out Because you had other programs, like
44:05
other aquatic theme parks that did not have the same protections, that have the
44:08
same research opportunities, there was a lot more exploitation on a lot less of
44:14
a grand scale. And so you're finding that, you know, ceworld is
44:17
kind of now hopefully leading the charge for changing those conditions and working and improving
44:22
those conservation efforts and getting creative with those research opportunities that are sorely needed to
44:27
protect the species because again, there are only fifty thousand of them in the
44:30
world, and we need to make sure that those populations continue to bloom.
44:35
So again, it's nuanced, it's a it's a larger discussion for what this
44:38
means overall for the species and for humans working with the species. Absolutely,
44:44
I do have a few more fun little things that I found. One was
44:46
that as we sort of talked about them going on to beaches to hunt as
44:51
a thing that they do, apparently this is something that they specifically teach their
44:54
young in many instances, is that mothers will push their calves onto these beaches
45:00
so that the calves start to learn how to sort of flop and wiggle to
45:01
get themselves back out into the water, because that's what they have to do
45:06
once they've gone on to shore to catch their prey. They'll get up on
45:08
these beaches, they'll grab their prey, and then they'll basically sort of flop
45:13
back out into the water. And so they start teaching that from an early
45:15
age, yes, so that they have it as a hunting technique, which
45:19
I thought was kind of wild. Have you ever seen videos of that?
45:21
Have you ever seen that? Like what like what that looks like? I
45:23
saw like a thumbnail of a video. I didn't actually end up watching the
45:28
video. It is really impressive, but it's very scary, like like it's
45:32
basically they charge at the beach. They're not like they're not like creeping up
45:37
onto the beach. They are they are like flying at this beach. Yeah,
45:40
it's like they come bursting out of a wave and then just grab a
45:44
seal and then like flop back into the water and that's when they start sharing
45:46
their food. It's it's really it's intense. Man. Another one that I
45:52
found that was kind of interesting is that orcas have what looked like reunions,
45:55
and there was actually just at at the time of this recording. A few
46:00
weeks ago they reported the largest reunion they'd ever seen that lasted longer than any
46:05
reunion they'd ever seen. They call the reunions because these are pods that they'll
46:09
come into contact with each other after not having seen each other for a long
46:13
time. And according to this one researcher I was reading, they said that
46:16
essentially they'll lineup, they'll create a line facing each other across like a three
46:22
hundred foot stretch of water. They're floating in this formation sort of elbow to
46:25
elbow, if you will, peck to peck, and they just hover there,
46:29
not making any sounds, just like are sort of looking at each other
46:31
like they're greeting silently or something. And then after a few minutes then they
46:37
basically party. They swim at each other, they're flopping around, they rush
46:40
and break rank and swim around each other. They're slapping their tails together,
46:44
they're jumping out of the water breach and rolling around. And again it doesn't
46:49
seem to have any other function other than this social engagement piece. And the
46:52
one that I saw on the news said that like sometimes they'll do this,
46:55
it'll go on for a few hours and it's a couple of pods. But
46:59
this they saw like six pods come together and they went for like twelve hours,
47:04
basically having the biggest Orca party ever, like a rave. You know.
47:08
They were just playing and playing and playing for so long. They said
47:13
they've never seen anything quite like it. It's really It's so fun though,
47:16
Like I feel like that's such a fun thing to think about that they're like,
47:20
right, they're getting together and they're like, hey, this is you
47:22
get like and just really like enjoying their company. I love that. Yeah,
47:28
super fun. So anyway, those are some of the interesting things I
47:30
saw about orcas. But anything else you have to say about orcas, I
47:35
think they're incredible creatures, and I think I'm really excited to see what they
47:38
discover about this kind of new thing, these boat attacks, and what it
47:42
means for kind of understanding our place in the world and how impactful we can
47:46
be with these species that we are co existing with. I think that's just
47:52
a it's just a really fascinating thing to me. Yeah, I mean,
47:53
I think if we use humans all we really have as ourselves as a template
47:59
against switched to compare social behavior, although we've seen social behavior or another species,
48:02
of course, but we are often looking at does this look like something
48:07
we do, and therefore is it something unique? Because humans do a lot
48:10
of things that are very unique relative to other species of animals, And so
48:15
we look at this and this like, this looks closer to what humans do
48:19
than a lot of what other social behaviors we see across other species. Where
48:23
I'm going with this, I think, is that understanding like why they do
48:27
this? We kind of have to speculate a little bit because we just don't
48:30
see other creatures who are as sensitive to social circumstances as humans are, and
48:37
as these orcas seem to be, where what their behavior is motivated by is
48:42
social interaction, right, Like, that's a huge amount of what humans do.
48:45
We have these traditions. We have our groups, our little tribes,
48:50
we have our families, we have family structures, we have societal roles that
48:53
we all play and has gotten incredibly incredibly complex among humans. But orcas also
48:59
seem to have have this. They have these little tribes, they have their
49:01
families, they have their hierarchies, they have their roles, and then they
49:05
hang out with other tribes and they like party and they have fun together,
49:07
yeah, and they like interact and like this this social world seems very rich
49:13
and fulfilling for them, and it's kind of, you know, fun to
49:15
think about, Like, well, when we have people who go to parties,
49:19
what's going on with their behavior? Why are they choosing the things that
49:22
they choose? And a lot of that we can understand relatively easily, Like
49:24
we can break down a lot of what's going on because we can ask people,
49:27
we can talk so much, we can like directly going there. But
49:30
then we see these sort of similar things with orcas, We're like, man,
49:32
what is going on for that? What do they get out of this?
49:35
You know, it seems like we have to assume, at least on
49:37
the surface, some of it is similar. Like there's some amount of like
49:40
I imagine there's some like I'm gonna hook the old orcas, like I'm gonna
49:45
hook up my daughter with this this uh this good orca sun over from this
49:49
pod and like they're gonna yeah exactly, and trying to set each other up
49:57
or just play and just have fun and all that. So anyway, without
50:00
speculating too much on the specific topographies of their behavior and the functions of those
50:04
behaviors. I think it's suffice it to say that we sort of look at
50:07
humans as a bit of an analog just because we can by not necessarily because
50:13
it's the most accurate, but it is still really fascinating none nonetheless, just
50:16
because it's it's so uncommon in many other species. Yes, absolutely, I
50:21
think, and I think it's the best way to put out. I couldn't
50:22
I couldn't have summed it up better myself lovely. Well, in that case,
50:27
if you're joining us for the first time, one of the things that
50:29
we do when we're wrapping up an episode is leave you with something actionable that
50:32
you can do, and that is to check out something that we found fun
50:37
and enjoyable and think that you might also find fun and enjoyable, and we
50:39
call that recommendations. But before we get to recommendations, it's important to acknowledge
50:44
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51:30
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51:34
and acknowledgement from us every show. And so I'd like to thank Mike,
51:37
m Megan, Layla, Mike t, Justin, Kim, Joshua, Brad,
51:40
Stephanie, Olivia and Brian for all of your support. Thank you so
51:45
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51:47
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51:52
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51:53
patreon dot com slash WWDWWD podcast and check that out there. Yes. In
52:00
addition, I need to thank the team of people who help make this show
52:04
happen. Writing research and fact checking by Shane Jess and myself, Production editing
52:08
by Justin and then our social coordinator is Emma Wilson. Thank you all very
52:15
much. Thank you for recording with me today, Shane and all you do,
52:17
Thank you, Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I'm
52:20
glad. Yeah, this was fun. Anything that I missed or anything you'd
52:22
like to add before we get to those fun fun recommendations? No, I
52:25
think that covers it. Awesome recommendations. I discovered documentary on Netflix, and
52:39
you know, I feel like, I'm not going to say this is the
52:43
greatest documentary ever. However, I feel like it's very particular, and I'm
52:47
somebody who is just like very really fascinating, like very very particular things,
52:52
and this was one of them. It's called Muscles in Mayhem, an unauthorized
52:55
story of American Gladiators. Did you watch American Gladiators growing up a little bit?
53:00
Yeah, I don't remember it. Very well, though it is a
53:04
wild time. So most of what everybody remembers is like you had these big,
53:07
like athletic people that had like very like one syllable names like Blaze and
53:14
Sky and all that stuff, right, Sure, and then you had a
53:16
couple that head too Nitro Laser, and they were all like really tough sounding,
53:21
very nineties names. Sure. It's a six episode series that interviews the
53:23
original Gladiators and like some other folks that came up, and how the show
53:29
came to be, how it became kind of this like weird nineties like phenomenon.
53:35
It kind of dives very briefly into crash TV, which was like kind
53:37
of in the nineties, was like all the stuff that where Reality TV was
53:42
like really terrible and all the things like that's what it was basically just like
53:45
not just in the nineties, Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's kind of
53:47
continued. And they were saying, like it's just all the criticisms and stuff
53:51
around it and how unsafe it was, and when you really think about American
53:55
Gladiators, you're like putting people who are not athletes up against people who are
54:00
athletes on activities that are not well thought out and people were getting hurt all
54:04
the time. It's really fascinating, kind of like like glimpse into the nineties.
54:07
It's from like nineteen eighty nine for seven seasons up through like ninety five,
54:12
I think it was is when they finished it up, And it was
54:15
just a super interesting, unique look at this time frame that I remember so
54:20
fondly because I was so obsessed with I was like, I want to get
54:22
in one of those steel balls and roll around. I want to do the
54:24
Eliminator. I wanted to do those things. And it's super super interesting and
54:29
also just a really interesting glimpse into Hollywood and how terrible it is. Sure,
54:34
so yeah, it sounds like fun. Yeah, it's great, all
54:37
right. And you said the documentary is a like six episode series. You
54:39
were saying, it's a six episode limited series on Netflix right now? Got
54:43
it? Okay? Yeah? Fun. I'm also recommending a TV series.
54:46
I don't know if this is going to get a second season, kind of
54:49
hard to imagine how it could. But it's a series called Jury Duty.
54:52
This is from free V and is on available on Amazon Prime for those of
54:58
you who like to watch that. It's sort of like reality DTV meets prank
55:02
show meet sitcom in a way. Sure, well a lot of improv comedy
55:07
the premise of the show without giving really anything away, because I think you
55:10
need to know this going in otherwise you may like it. You might think
55:15
this is you know, not as funny as it is, or it's crazy.
55:17
I don't know. Anyway, is that a bunch of actors and improv
55:21
comedians get together to basically stage a trial, and they get a guy off
55:29
Craigslist for jury duty for this trial, and so he shows up thinking it's
55:34
a real trial and it's real jury duty he's doing because he's been summoned for
55:38
jury duty or like has been asked to come to for jury duty. Sure,
55:42
and specifically the recruitment was like, oh, we're filling this documentary about
55:46
how juries work. I think was how they just fined having all the cameras
55:50
there and everything, and so he's sort of showing up thinking, well,
55:52
this is going to be, you know, a really boring thing. But
55:57
they'll be all these cameras and they're just shooting like what it's like the new
55:59
jury duty. And so that that's why he sort of volunteered for it,
56:00
I think is what happened. Anyway, so they set up all these beats
56:05
and skits they wanted to have happened along the way. Then they'd engage him,
56:08
this guy who is unsuspecting, thinking this is all real, and they
56:13
go through and they said they specifically had to arrange days where like almost nothing
56:16
would happen. They'd show up and they'd just be like eight hours of very
56:20
little going on, because that's what Jerry Duty can be sometimes, right,
56:22
right, And so they'd only keep, of course the parts they filmed that
56:25
were meant to be sort of fun for the show. But they had scripted
56:29
in all these interactions to take place. But if the guy, like they
56:32
couldn't predict what he was going to do necessarily, so they had some sort
56:36
of if this happens, then do this, but if this happens, then
56:38
do this, And then sometimes they just had to go completely off script and
56:42
make it up as they went, and includes some very eccentric characters in it,
56:46
And anyway, James Marsden is in it. He plays sort of a
56:50
very Hollywood elite douche version of himself, and so anyway, again don't want
56:55
to give it too much away, but the show is just absolutely hilarious.
57:00
It's so funny, it's so well done, it's super engaging. So what
57:05
you might hear about this and maybe maybe not wanting to watch it's like prank
57:07
shows can be really hard to watch because you're like watching someone like have a
57:09
bad day and get upset and like that can suck. Anyway, they really
57:15
don't. They handle it very nicely in this one. They when they do
57:16
the big reveal and they're really like, they're really kind, you know,
57:20
they really treat the guy like, hey, you are such a good sport
57:22
about this, you know, thank you really for being along here. So
57:25
there's a big reveal which I think is actually again, I don't want to
57:29
spoil it, but you need to know that going in otherwise you might be
57:30
like this poor guy that they did this too. It's not like a mean,
57:36
like heartless prank, right, yes, it is not mean anyway,
57:38
I strongly recommend go check out Durry Duty. I love that. That's so
57:43
good. I spent as much time talking about that as I did talking about
57:45
why it's interesting to learn about whales. But that's where we're at, all,
57:50
right, Well, if you'd like to tell us about TV shows that
57:52
you are watching that are like documentaries on various streaming platforms, where we're always
57:55
open to hearing those things. If there's something you'd like to add about orca
57:59
behavior, what we missed, or what you'd like to comment on, or
58:01
just tell us how great of a job we did, you should certainly do
58:04
that. You can reach out to us directly by emailing us at infoll at
58:07
WWDWWD podcast. We're active on all the other social media platforms and we want
58:12
to hear from everybody who is who is there. So I think that that
58:15
is all that I have anything that I missed or anything you'd like to add
58:17
before we wrap up here, No, I think that covers it perfect.
58:21
All right, then, thank you for listening. This is Abraham and this
58:22
is Shane. We're out see ya. You've been listening to Why we do
58:27
what we do. You can learn more about this and other episodes by going
58:30
to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have
58:37
an awesome day