New research examining stunning footage recorded of orca pods in the Gulf of California in recent years reveals that the intelligent cetaceans are kind of wasteful, reckless assholes without regard for the environmental impact of their feeding behaviors too, NBC News reports.
In both encounters examined by marine biologists, the whales surrounded a great white shark and toyed with it a little bit before ripping open its abdomen to feast on the shark’s liver, but left the rest of its body to sink to the bottom of the gulf where it was in all likelihood consumed by benthic scavengers. So yes, the shark’s corpse is not exactly a six-pack ring. Still the wastefulness aspect kind of evokes the old tropes about rhino horns and elephant tusks being taken from their freshly shot corpses in colonial Africa while the hunters left the rest to rot rather than butchering it for consumption by the often impoverished and neglected subjects of the European empires.
Orcas are so smart they’ve evolved to the point of some of humanity’s worst qualities.