Killer whale boat attack videos might not be what they seem

TikTok can't look to get capable of "orca attacks".

A ample fin moves towards a vessel, followed by a immense splash. Next happening you know, a slayer whale leaps retired of the h2o and hits the boat.

Sounds similar the worldly of nightmares, but it's been a world for sailors on the Iberian seashore of Spain and Portugal.

GT Orca Atlántica (GTOA), which monitors slayer whales successful the area, recorded 207 interactions successful 2022.

Social media's been flooded with videos of these encounters, seemingly showing the creatures chasing boats.

There's adjacent been a fig of reports over the past 3 years of the mammals hitting and sinking vessels.

There are aggregate theories astir wherefore they're doing it.

One of the main ones connected societal media is that the orcas are seeking revenge for White Gladis - a slayer whale deed by a boat.

That caught connected erstwhile Alfredo López Fernandez, from GTOA, was quoted arsenic saying a "traumatised orca" had launched the attacks.

But, according to carnal behaviour experts, it mightiness not beryllium rather however it looks.

"The thought of revenge is simply a large story, but there's nary grounds for it," says neuroscientist Lori Marino, president of the Whale Sanctuary Project.

"There's ne'er been a lawsuit of an orca harming a quality being successful the wild.

"If they truly wanted to bash harm and harm the radical connected the vessel they could easy bash that."

Instead, Lori tells BBC Newsbeat, it's much apt the evident attacks "started retired arsenic play behaviour", and it's a lawsuit of copycat slayer whales alternatively than aggression.

"We're talking astir precise intelligent beings, and we cognize that they are societal learners," she says.

"It gets passed down... it whitethorn beryllium thing that's amusive for them, and they're gonna support doing it."

It's a presumption shared by Dr Deborah Giles, the subject and probe manager for the non-profit Wild Orca, successful Washington State, USA.

She besides believes the whales are having amusive and "engaging with things successful their environment".

"I truly consciousness that it is thing astir the underside of the sailboat, the keel, oregon the agelong information of the vessel that sticks acold down into the water," she says.

"There's thing astir that portion of the vessel that seems to beryllium charismatic to the animals."

Dr Giles is keeping an unfastened caput and won't regularisation retired different possibilities.

But it's precisely due to the fact that whales are truthful intelligent that she thinks the onslaught mentation is unlikely.

After all, she points out, if orcas truly wanted to instrumentality revenge against humans for ill-treatment, wherefore hold until now?

"Whales successful this portion of the satellite were heavy targeted successful the precocious 60s, done the mid 70s, for the marine parks," she says.

"They've witnessed members of their families being taken retired of the h2o and enactment connected a motortruck ne'er to return.

"If immoderate radical of slayer whales had a crushed to retaliate oregon question revenge connected humans, that would beryllium this population.

"But we've ne'er seen that."

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