Stay Signed In
Do you want to access your site more quickly on this computer? Check this box, and your username and password will be remembered for two weeks. Click logout to turn this off.
Stay Safe
Do not check this box if you are using a public computer. You don't want anyone seeing your personal info or messing with your site.
The killer Whale comes from the family Ceacea, from the family Delphinidae. There Scientific name is Orcinus ORca, but it is often shortend to ''Orca''
orcas are very Unique looking. They are sleek, and black and white. They are all black apart from the whiet grey color behing there dorsal, which is known as the saddle patch. They have white behind here eye, there jaw, and parts of the flikes.
Orcas live in every ocean in the world, but most are found in the colder waters of the Artic and Antarctic. There, the food is very everywhere! They eat Marine mamals, turtles, seals, penguins, otters, birds and fish.They hunk in packs,like wolves.
Male killer whales( bulls) are normally larger than the females. They are about 19-22 ft. in length and weigh from 8,000 to 12,000 lbs. The largest bull orca was 32 ft and weighed 22,000. Female orcas are called cows and they average 16-19 ft. and weigh from 3,000 to 8,000 lbs. The largest recorded female orca weighed 7,500 and was 28 ft. in length. These sizes vary from where the orca lives.
With mature males, their triangular dorsal fin can reach the height of 6 ft. Females have smaller dorsal fins and they are more curved, normally 3-5 ft in height.
Young orcas are called calves. At birth they weigh around 300-400 lbs. and are usually 8.5 ft in length. They nurse from they mother for a year or so. Nursing last only 5-10 seconds, but the calf nursed several times an hour, all day long. At four month old, the calf begins to eat small amounts of fish . This is when their teeth start to emerge. After about a year, the calf is weaned Calves are often found in mother/calf position. This is where the calf glides beneath its mother in the slipstream, a current created by the motion of its mother that pulls it along. At first, their color is yellow/tan in the white areas of their body, but this disappears as the calves mature, usually in a year or so.
Killer whales live in groups called pods. It can consist of as little as five to as much as thirty different orcas. There are males, females and calves. Sometimes small pods will join together to create a mega large pod. The females 'run' the pod and there is a matriarch as their leader, usually an older female orca with some of her mature calves in a pod.
They usually swim at 2-6 mph, but can go as fast as 30 mph if they need to! When swimming near the surface of the water, orcas stay beneath the surface for around 30 seconds. Orcas do not dive too deep (normally from 100 to 200 ft.), but can go 900 ft. After diving, they stay under the water for as long as 10 minutes, sometimes more. They breathe through their blow hole and the flap is opened, then closed before they go underwater.
The lifespan of a female orca may reach fifty years, but male orcas normally live up to 25-30 years. Thankfully, killer whales are not an endangered species and we do not want it to become that way. There are an estimated amount of 80,000-90,000 orcas in the oceans today. Researchers use the whale's dorsal fins, scars and other things to identify the many wild orcas.
Back To Home Page
