Orca Whales

Orca whales are toothed whales. They are also known as Killer Whales.

A baby orca is called a calf and a grown-up female is a cow. The male is called a bull. A bulls dorsal fin can grow to be six feet tall. Baby orcas are about seven feet long. The orca can grow to thirty-two feet. Male orcas can weigh up to 18,000 pounds. The baby can weigh up to 450 pounds when born.

When a calf is born, it doesnt have teeth. Most females have babies every three years. The belly and eye patches of a newborn orca are tanish-orange or pink for the first couple of months. Orca calves are born tail first.

Orcas are very good at acting and performing. They can be tamed. In the open ocean, orcas are very playful. They love to spyhop. When orcas spyhop, they put their whole heads out of the water and look at their surroundings.

An orca can swim thirty miles per hour. They like to swim close to land. They usually travel in pods with four to one hundred other orcas. An orca will swim and live with the same pod for its whole life.

Orcas breach a lot. Breaching is when a whale jumps partly or all the way out of the water. Orcas log when they sleep. Logging is when a whale is lying on the surface of the water, awake or asleep.

Orcas make clicking noises to communicate. Orcas also make high-pitched squeaking noises to communicate. They also may be communicating when they are breaching.

Orcas are the second largest toothed whale. The orcas dorsal fin can grow up to be six feet. Behind the dorsal fin, there is a little gray area called the saddle. Adult orcas are black and white, with a gray saddle. There is also a little white patch on each side of the whale, just above and behind the eye. Orcas are called Black Fish in British Columbia, Canada.

Orcas are so terrifying that when gray whales sense the presence of orcas, they have been reported to go into shock and lie belly up waiting to die.

The orca is a toothed whale. The teeth are used to grab prey. Then, the orca swallows it whole. Orcas have fifty cone-shaped teeth. Sometimes, orcas form a circle around some dolphins or sharks and one by one go in and eat their fill. An orca will swallow its food whole and its stomach chews its food. Orcas do not hunt people. Instead, they have been known to kill other whales, sometimes twenty times their size. Sharks, dolphins, penguins, seals, sea lions or other whales can not escape a pod of hungry killer whales.

The orca is a biter. There are more biter whales than baleen whales. An orca will actually beach itself to eat sea lions and other prey. Then, with the power of its body, the orca will wiggle themselves right back into the ocean.

Orcas have been known to die because whalers have killed them. Other than humans, there are no natural predators that kill orcas.

by Jacquelyn, Mariel, Michael