THE COMPLEX SOCIAL LIFE OF ORCAS

Orcas are among the most intelligent animals in our planet, only equaled by elephants and hominids. Due to their intelligence, they organize themselves in extremely complex social structures. If you want to learn more about the fascinating social life of killer whales, keep reading.

Unlike most animals, orcas spend all their lives with their mothers and form groups called matrilines. These are formed by a matriarch, all her sons and daughters, as well as their grandsons and granddaughters. The descendants always stay with their moms, although males usually mate with females from other groups. Matrilines never separate for more than a few hours at most.

Matrilines related by an old common matriarch form bigger groups called pods. These groups separate for longer periods of time than matrilines, although never longer than weeks or a few months.

Photo by: Kenai Fjords National Park
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Orcas are intelligent enough to develop a language and even have dialects, and every pod has a different one. However, sometimes dialects are similar enough for the member of different pods to understand each other. These pods form another level of organization called clans, and they are usually distant relatives.

Clans occasionally meet with other clans with different dialects. These clan meetings are called communities, and they are the biggest and looser level of organization.

These different social aggregations share habits, methods and even games, in which many scientists have even called culture. If humans have the boldness to think that these creatures have culture, and culture is what differentiates us from other animals, we may need to ask ourselves other questions. How different are these animals from us? How ethical is it to keep them in captivity?

Now that science has learned enough to know how intelligent orcas, dolphins, primates or elephants are, are we brave enough to admit that we may not be the only animals to have special treatment? Do we need to include some animals at our same level? I think that an honest debate is needed.

Photo by: Jay Iwasaki
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