Animals…They Ain’t Like People!
Here’s a conversation I had with a friend last night:
ME: And then on the flight back they showed BBC’s Earth: Frozen Planet and it was this whole documentary about polar bears and penguins and seals and killer whales.
FRIEND: Oooh! Cool!
ME: Yeah, they showed how killer whales, when they want to eat a seal and the seal is on top of some ice, they can’t get to the seal because it’s on land and they’re in the water, you know?
FRIEND: Yeah.
ME: So what they’ll do is, three or four killer whales will synchronize and they’ll swim under the ice in unison and then in unison, at the exact same time, they’ll flip their tales really hard and it’ll make the ice shake and capsize so the seal falls into the water!
FRIEND: Wow! And then only one of them eats the seal?
ME: Uh. No. They sort of all try to dogpile on it and they rip it apart.
FRIEND: Oh. I thought it would be like they’re working together so that one of them can eat. Like teamwork for the good of the pack.
ME: Well, one of them did eat most of the seal because, you know, he was the biggest and strongest and the best at grabbing most of the seal. I guess the rest of them just go hungry and he gets to have a full belly and have sex with the most attractive female killer whale.
FRIEND: Oh.
ME: There was this one seal that escaped them for a little while, but then it just got too tired and was like sitting there panting on the edge of the ice, so the whale just poked his head up, grabbed it by the tail, and dragged it screaming into the water.
FRIEND: Oh.
ME: Yeah, they’re not like people.
