Watch a Pod of Killer Whales Turn a Shark Into Sushi

Oh, so that's how they got the name.

December 19, 2016 9:00 am

Don’t let the meditative piano music fool you — this is basically Nature, the horror movie. 

Orcas — those magnificent seafaring mammals, late of Sea Worlds worldwide — earned their now-frowned-upon nickname in earnest: the animals formerly known as killer whales are predators at the very pinnacle of the aquatic food chain. We don’t get to see that in action much, though, due to the fact that their usual food is generally below sea level: sharks, squid, fish.

Here, though, is once-in-a-lifetime footage of a pod of orcas making a tidy snack of a shark — believed to be a five-foot seven gill — captured by drone pilot and photographer Slater Moore, based in Monterey, California, and captured on December 13th.

Wrote Moore (or his social media assistant) on his studio’s Facebook page: “We saw about 25 individual [orcas] and I was even able to get footage of them feeding on a seven-gill shark with the drone! These whales are typically smaller in size than the Bigg’s or transient killer whale type [frequently seen near Monterey] and they had several very young calves with them! So lucky to get to see this!!!”

Truth: we had to watch the video twice before we realized that that giant silvery thing in the orca’s mouth was, in fact, the shark — still seemingly fighting against its (at this point) fairly obvious fate. The pod of orcas — as well as a few calves — barely break pace as they speed through the water and the shark is devoured.

Nature is metal.

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