The ocean’s apex predator, the orca whale, was caught teaching its kids how to kill. It sounds darker than it is, but it’s still pretty brutal.
Orcas are notorious for eating everything you’d think would prey on them, like great white sharks. They’ve even been known to chomp through blue whales, the biggest animals to ever exist. But orcas aren’t born with murder in their hearts. Their brutality is a learned behavior.
The footage, revealed by The Times, was captured as part of a BBC wildlife documentary series called Parenthood, narrated by the legendary David Attenborough and directed by Jeff Wilson. Filmed off Western Australia’s Bremer Bay using underwater gimbals and tow cams, the footage shows a momma orca schooling her pod in advanced suffocation techniques.
One orca pretends to be prey, while the others circle and shove its blowhole underwater, demonstrating exactly how they take down full-grown whales. It’s a family workshop on how to kill.
Orcas Filmed Pretending to Drown Each Other for Hunting Practice
Later in the same episode, the team films what these rehearsals were preparing for: a coordinated attack on an unsuspecting blue whale. Blue whales can famously hold their breath underwater for up to 30 minutes.
That incredible skill wasn’t enough to save it from a pod of determined, hungry orcas.
Parenthood spent three years filming across 23 countries and six continents, capturing a wide range of parenting strategies among various types of wildlife. Director Jeff Wilson told The Times that his favorite story is about an African spider that sacrifices its body to feed its young. Sounds in a heartwarming time.
The series premiered on August 3 on BBC One with no firm US release plans as of yet.
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