Early Morn in the North 155 



other activities, the killer eating anything from small fish and even 

 crabs to penguins and other sea birds, seals, including the huge sea 

 elephant, and the walrus, and any other whale it can catch from 

 porpoises to the mighty blue whale, which it will attack in packs 

 and, if the quarry is wounded or weak, tear to pieces. 



Male killers, which are almost twice the size of the females, have 

 been recorded up to thirty feet in length; these animals are barrel- 

 shaped and very bulky, and, with their speed, and very large jaws 

 armed with huge knife-edged, recurved, interlocking teeth, they 

 are the most terrible flesh-eating creatures on our planet, far sur- 

 passing even the great white shark in boldness and acumen. Every- 

 thing in the sea flees from them, even the largest whales, which have 

 been reported as uttering bellows of fear on such occasions. One 

 killer was caught choking on a seal, and when opened up, was found 

 to contain no fewer than fourteen others; from another, thirteen 

 porpoises and fourteen seals were taken; and from still a third, only 

 sixteen feet long itself, fourteen more seals. Killers will attack small 

 boats, possibly under the impression that they are whales, and will 

 batter ice floes from below to get at marooned men. They often 

 try to pull dead whales away from whalers and used to be a great 

 menace when cutting-in was done at sea by lunging up on to the 

 corpses to grab at the flensers. They actually bite large hunks out 

 of the bigger whales and then surface to chew the pieces. 



The Killer (Orcinus area), is universal in range from the Arctic 

 to the Antarctic and is fairly common. There appears to be a distinct 

 race in the Pacific that lacks the white spot on the side of the head, 

 but there is, in any case, considerable variation in the color pattern. 

 This is as shown in the illustration at the end of this book, the dark 

 areas being jet black, and the Hght pure white. The flippers and the 

 flukes of the tail are very large and the dorsal fin is exceptionally 

 slender and tall, sometimes being more than six feet long, and turn- 

 ing over at the tip hke a dog's ear. Killers travel in packs of from 

 four to forty and often swim in close formation at a very rapid rate. 



The English sometimes call them the "grampus" from the Old 

 English grapeySy ex the Old French grapois, which was a contraction 

 of the term crassus piscis applied to all the toothed whales, other than 

 the Physeter, or sperm whale. The name grampus is now properly 

 reserved for quite a different small whale, only ten to thirteen feet 



