Orca

“ Had those whales been hungry, the pram would have been no protection—so, at least, Nils believed. He sat there, stiffening with cold terror.
The high, sharp-pointed dorsals disappeared, and Nils, gazing downward, could descry the black bulks with their curious blotchy white markings prowling about, inspecting the dead rorquals, while the sharks scattered. He could even see the serrated jaws gape and withdraw without biting. Evidently the food was too stale. Orca must be hungry indeed to devour what he has not slain. ”

“ It is not easy for any observer to be intimate with a sawfish; and the most ardent naturalist's acquaintance with an orca, or "killer" whale, must be essentially a distant one, if he would hope to put his observations upon record. Needless to say, my own knowledge of the orca, the shark, the narwhal, or the colossal cuttlefish of the ocean [Pg vi] depths, is not of the same kind as my knowledge of the bear, the moose, the eagle, and others of the furtive folk of our New Brunswick wilderness. ”

“ It was an octopus, which had been so ill-advised as to leave its customary home among the rocks of the bottom and seek new feeding-grounds. Before it had time even to attempt escape, the great jaws of the “killer” engulfed it. For one moment its eight long tentacles writhed desperately, clutching at its captor’s lips. Then they vanished, sucked in and swallowed at a gulp. Thereupon the orca sailed leisurely back to the sunlit surface, met on her way up by her anxious calf, which had not been quite quick enough to follow its mother’s lightning descent. ”

“ The genus Orca has as characters:—Teeth ten to thirteen, long and strong. Pterygoids not quite meeting. Vertebrae C 7, D 11 to 12, L 10, Ca 23. The first two or three fused. The dorsal fin is long and pointed.
Of this genus there may be more than one species; but the best known is the Killer Whale, O. gladiator (Fig. 180, p. 341) , often spoken of as the "Grampus." [28] It is marked with contrasting bands of white or yellow upon a black body-colour. The animal grows to a considerable length, as much as 30 feet. Orca is a powerful and rapacious Whale ”

“ In Orca generally four or five cervical vertebræ are ankylosed as in the cachelots, but in the two species of Orcella only the atlas and axis are joined. "In the killers and ca'ing whales the ribs are transferred to the transverse processes at the seventh dorsal, whilst in Orcella the transference does not take place until the eighth." The skull resembles that of Orca in the breadth of the upper jaw being produced by the maxillaries, whereas in Globicephalus this effect is caused by the premaxillaries. The teeth resemble the killer's. ”

“ Landers told me, are themselves a species of rapacious, carnivorous whale, whose upper and lower jaws are armed with sharp, saw-like teeth. They are otherwise known as the Orca gladiator, and tiger-hearted gladiators of the sea they are. The great, clumsy bowhead with no teeth with which to defend itself, whose only weapons are its flukes and its fins, is no match for them. They attack the great creature whenever they encounter it, and when it has exhausted itself in its efforts to escape, they tear open its jaws and feast upon its tongue. ”

“ Skull about 22 inches long. It is about the same size as the Orca from Algoa Bay; but the brain-cavity is rather broader and the beak is not so acute in front.
Gervais, in the ‘Zoology and Paleontology of France,’ figures the skull of a young Delphinus orca, taken on the coast of Cette, which is now in the Museum of Paris. It appears to belong to this species; or it may be that the Orca of the Mediterranean does not grow to the usual size; or, again, it may be of a different species; for the skull is only fifty-eight centimetres long and thirty broad. ”

“ The killer belongs to the dolphin family, of which it is the largest member, reaching a length of from twenty to thirty feet. These animals are found in almost every ocean of the world and, although several species have been described, probably there is but one, Orca orca. The dorsal fin of the male is six feet high while that of the female is but three and one-half or four feet, and this has led to the naming of specimens which have proved to be only the male and female of the same species. ”

“ Little cause for apprehension had the calf of the orca, as long as it kept near its mother. For this most swift and savage of all the cetaceans feared nothing that swam, except her giant cousin, the cachalot or sperm-whale. Though but twenty feet long, she would attack and kill, through the sheer ferocity of her fury, the great whalebone or “right” whale, of fully four times her length and many times her bulk. Man she might have feared, had she ever learned his power; but, being poor in blubber, her tribe had never tempted man to so difficult and perilous a hunting. ”

“ It is a globe surmounted by a cross, and is held in the palm of the left hand. In Art it is a common attribute of the Infant Saviour.
Orca, Gr. and R. (ὄρκη or ὕρχα) . An earthenware vessel of large size, but smaller than the amphora; it was used for holding salted fish. The diminutive is orcula; the modern Italian orcio.
Orchestra, Gr. and R. (ὀρχήστρα, i. e. dancing-place) . The lowest part of the Greek and Roman theatres; usually occupied by the chorus. It contained an altar, on which sacrifices to Bacchus were sometimes made. ”

“ GRAMPUS (Orca gladiator, or Orca orca) , a cetacean belonging to the Delphinidae or dolphin family, characterized by its rounded head without distinct beak, high dorsal fin and large conical teeth. The upper parts are nearly uniform glossy black, and the under parts white, with a strip of the same colour over each eye. ”

“ HOW KILLERS TEAR OUT A GRAY WHALE’S TONGUE The gray whales, as well as other large cetaceans, have only two enemies—man and one of their own kind, the orca or killer whale. Although twice the size of the killers and correspondingly strong, when one of the orcas appears the devilfish become terrified and either wildly dash for shore or turn belly up at the surface, with fins outspread, paralyzed by fright. ”

“ Cuvier is of opinion, also, that it is the same animal, which is also known by the name of “bootskopf,” the Delphinus orca of Linnæus. (See N. 2225.) This cetaceous animal, he says, is a most dangerous enemy to the whale, which it boldly attacks, devouring its tongue, which is of a tender quality and enormous size. He thinks, however, that the orca taken at the port of Ostia was no other than a cachelot. ”

“ How strange now to turn from this ravenous hunter to the huge Sperm Whale, eighty feet long, with a head one-third the size of its whole body and more than a ton of spermacetic oil in its forehead,326 and to think that this monster swims quietly along in the sea, drops its long thin lower jaw, and with wide-open mouth simply gulps in jelly-fish, small fish, and other fry, thus without any exertion or fuss slaying its millions of small and soft creatures quietly, as the orca does the higher creatures with so much battle and strife! ”

“ It is carried on by a family named Davidson, father and sous, in conjunction with the Killers. And for more than twenty years this business partnership has existed between the humans and the Cetaceans, and the utmost rectitude and solicitude for each other's interests has always been maintained—Orca gladiator seizes the Whale for Davidson, and holds him until the deadly lance is plunged into his " life," and Davidson lets Orca carry the carcass to the bottom, and take his tithe of luscious blubber. ”

“ The rostrum is very massive and wide, but gradually tapers to the apex, and is concave. Lower jaw very long and narrow. Atlas free, but all the other cervical vertebræ united into a solid mass. Vertebral formula: cervicals 7, dorsals 11, lumbars 8, caudals 24. Total, 50. Habitat: cosmopolitan, in warm currents.
KILLER WHALE, ORCA, GRAMPUS, THRESHER
Orca orca (Linn.) Form robust. Head pointed. Heavy pointed conical teeth in both jaws. An extremely high dorsal fin. The color is black, with an elliptical white spot on each side of head. ”

“ And now there remains the question what enemies besides man these strong-swimming milk-givers can have in their ocean home? We have seen that the orca or killer whale will turn cannibal and devour those of its own kind, and the swordfish is said to attack whales with its formidable spear ”

“ But the Whale, that cannot turn its huge body, not knowing how to resist the wily Orca, puts all its hopes in flight; yet that flight is weak, because this sluggish Beast, burdned by its own weight, wants one to guide her, to fly to the Foords, to escape the dangers. ”

“ He is found in all seas, but is particularly numerous in the North Pacific. In the far north he pursues the beluga or white whale and the walrus. He captures the young walrus in a novel manner. The latter climbs on the back of the mother and the great ivory tusks keep the orca at bay, but he dives beneath the old one and comes up against her with such a blow that the young one falls from the rounded back of its mother, when it is immediately seized and crushed in the great jaws of the rapacious animal. ”

“ Skeptical modern science is not satisfied with this interpretation of any combat at sea seen at a distance. It recognizes the improbability of aggressive partnership between two animals so different as the sword-fish and a shark, and explains the turbulent encounters occasionally seen at sea by ascribing them to the attacks of the killer whale, Orca, upon larger species of the same order. ”

“ The Bowhead is hunted for his "whalebone"; the Cachalot or true Sperm, the lord of the toothed whales, for that great lake of sperm oil and spermaceti which he carries round in a portable tank in the top of his head.
It is customary to call whales "fierce," "savage," "murderous," but this is rank libel, for the whale is timid and affectionate. Every family, however, has its black sheep. The Orca or Killer is the terror alike of sealing-rookeries, fish-schools, and whale bone whales. ”

“ They are all predaceous, subsisting on living animal food of some kind. One genus alone (Orca) eats other warm-blooded animals, as seals and even members of its own order, both large and small. Some feed on fish, others on small floating Crustacea, pteropods, and medusa?, while the staple food of many is constituted of the various species of Cephalopods. With some exceptions the Cetacea generally are timid, inoffensive animals, active in their movements, sociable and gregarious in their habits. ”

“ If the killer-whale was common here, it would be patent to the most casual eye, because it is the habit of this ferocious cetacean to swim so closely at the surface as to show its peculiar sharp dorsal fin high above the water. Possibly a very superficial observer could and would confound that long trenchant fluke of the Orca with the stubby node upon the spine of a humpback whale, which that animal exhibits only when it is about to dive. Humpbacks feed around the islands, but not commonly; they are the exception. ”

“ Like bulldogs clinging to the head of the leviathan, they piloted it into the lagoon, the cachalot springing into the air and falling back in foam and thunder. Up the left arm of the lagoon the fighters came, driving everything before them, palu, garfish, bream, turtle, rays and eels all rushing to escape, the orcas like tigers to left and right and ahead, sharks and giant dogfish following after, tearing at the swordfish, whose fins were in ribbons and whose tail was gone. ”

“ That "l'Huorco" of the Italians, the Orco of Bojardo and Ariosto, may be derived from the Latin Orcus, according to Minucci, as Mr. Keightley imagines, I am not prepared to dispute. Such curious coincidences are common to all who have wandered in the mazes of etymology; but I will merely suggest that it is quite as probable that Orco and Huorco were also derived from Oigur, the name by which the Tartars of the Crimea were known to the Italians as early as the twelfth century, as we have already seen. Florio, however (1598) , says, "Orco as Orca, a sea monster," which the Ogre never was. ”

“ Coming to the larger mammals, one occasionally sees the long lithe sea-leopard, formidably armed with ferocious teeth and doubtless containing a penguin or two and perhaps a young crab-eating seal. The killer whale (Orca gladiator) , unappeasably voracious, devouring or attempting to devour every smaller animal, is less common in the pack but numerous on the coasts. ”

“ II. Pectoral fin broad, rounded or truncated at the end; hand shorter than the arm-bones; second finger the longest, the rest gradually shorter; phalanges of the second finger six or eight (cf. p. 63) .
Family 13. ORCADÆ.
Orca, Gray, Cat. Seals & Whales, p. 278; Synops. Whales & Dolph. p. 8.
Head rounded, scarcely beaked. Dorsal fin falcate. Skull heavy; wings of sides expanded; beak short, broad; triangle in front of the blowers flat. Lower jaw thick in front; symphysis short. Teeth large. ”

“ The common Atlantic species (Orca gladiator) , is found both on the European and the American coast. Two species (Orca ater and O. rectipinna) occur on the Pacific coast.
Kil*lesse" (?) , n. [Cf. Coulisse.] (Arch.) (a) A gutter, groove, or channel. (b) A hipped roof. [Prov. Eng.] Parker.
Kil"li*fish` (?) , n. (Zoöl.) Any one of several small American cyprinodont fishes of the genus Fundulus and allied genera. They live equally well in fresh and brackish water, or even in the sea. They are usually striped or barred with black. ”