292 WHALES AND DOLPHINS 



of the animal fit in very well with the suggested time of pairing 

 just mentioned. 



The Killer is world-wide in its distribution in areas as far 

 apart as the Greenland Sea and Bering Sea in the north and 

 the Ross Sea and the Scotia Sea in the south. It is naturally 

 most abundant in the Arctic and Antarctic, where there is a 

 never-failing supply of food in the form of v/hales, seals and 

 aquatic birds to draw from, and it is from these parts of the 

 world that descriptions of the habits of this Cetacean have 

 mostly been obtained. 



It is a not infrequent visitor round the British Isles ; since 

 191 1, when the systematic recording of whale strandings was 

 commenced, 25 have been washed up on various parts of 

 the coast, and others have been observed swimming offshore. 

 There is nothing, judging from the position of stranded speci- 

 mens, to indicate that the Killer has a predilection for any 

 particular area and it may turn up at any time of year. Of 

 recently-stranded British Killers the largest was a male 

 26 feet long, washed up on the Kentish coast in 1926, but there 

 is an earlier record of one killed at Greenwich which measured 

 31 feet. It is not usual for Killers to occur far from the sea, 

 so that the capture of one at Alloa, thirty miles up the river 

 Forth, beyond the Forth Bridge, is noteworthy. This animal, 

 a female 12 feet 6 inches long, was believed by the fishermen 

 who secured it to have been chasing salmon in the estuary 

 when it got into difficulties in shallow water and so was easily 

 captured. 



But salmon hunting is of little significance when one thinks 

 of the bigger quarries which the Killer Whale usually seeks out. 

 The large whalebone whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and 

 penguins are all attacked by this animal and, from the published 

 accounts of Antarctic voyages, it is only by chance that man 

 has not been added to the list. Bell in ' British Quadrupeds ' 

 instances an Orcinus 21 feet long in the stomach of which were 

 found remains of thirteen porpoises and fourteen seals. In a 

 report on sealing in the Pribilof Islands there is a record of 

 another killer having fourteen seals in its stomach. Scammon, 

 in ' Marine Mammalia and American Whale Fishery ', describes 

 how three or four Killers do not hesitate to grapple with the 

 largest baleen whale and attributes to the species a " boldness 



