Wild killer whales are not considered a threat to humans and no fatal attack on humans has ever been documented. Some local populations are considered threatened or endangered due to prey depletion, habitat loss, pollution, capture for marine mammal parks, and conflicts with human fisheries. The genus name Orcinus means ‘of the kingdom of the dead’
About Killer whale in brief
The killer whale is one of 35 species in the oceanic dolphin family, which first appeared about 11 million years ago. Wild killer whales are not considered a threat to humans and no fatal attack on humans has ever been documented. Some local populations are considered threatened or endangered due to prey depletion, habitat loss, pollution, capture for marine mammal parks, and conflicts with human fisheries. In late 2005, the southern resident killer whales, which swim in British Columbia and Washington state waters, were placed on the U.S. Endangered Species list. The three to five types of killer whales may be enough to be considered different races, subspecies, or possibly even species. The genus name Orcinus means \”of the kingdom of the dead\”, or \”belonging to Orcus\”. Ancient Romans originally used orca for these animals, possibly borrowing Ancient Greek ὄρυξ, which referred to a whale species. Since the 1960s, \”orca\” has steadily grown in common use. They are sometimes referred to as ‘blackfish’, a name also used for other whale species, and ‘grampus’, a former name for the species, but is now seldom used. They can be found in each of the world’s oceans in a variety of marine environments, from Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas, absent only from the Baltic and Black seas, and some areas of the Arctic Ocean. The species is more closely related to other oceanic dolphins than to other whales.
Although it has morphological similarities with the false killer whale, the pygmy killer whale and the pilot whales, a study of cytochrome b gene sequences by Richard LeDuc indicated that its closest extant relatives are the snubfin dolphins of the genus Orcaella. However, a more recent study places the orca as a sister taxon to the Lissodelphininae, a clade that includes Lagenorhynchus and Cephalorhysus. Although the term ‘killer whale’ is increasingly used, English-speaking scientists most often use the traditional name \”killer whale\”. The genus is clearly considered different, but it is likely that O.C. will be split into a number of different species over the next few years or at least at least a few years. In addition, separate killer whale groups have been distinguished in the west coast of Canada and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s identified the following three types: Transients and specialist killer whales. Other populations have not been as well studied, although they avoid each other but avoid other populations, but avoid the same areas but avoid each others as well. They have been known to attack baleen whale calves, and even adult whales. Some feed exclusively on fish, while others hunt marine mammals such as seals and other species of dolphin. Killer whales are highly social; some populations are composed of matrilineal family groups which are the most stable of any animal species.
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This page is based on the article Killer whale published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
