ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
77 
KILLER WHALE (ORCA GLADIATOR) 
A group of killers displaying their high dorsal fins. 
Photograph by Lawrence Mott at Catalina Island, California. 
was five fathoms deep,—the three orcas de¬ 
scended, bring up large pieces of flesh in their 
mouths which they devoured after coming to the 
surface.” Scammon refers to the loss of whales 
killed by whalemen, while being towed to the 
ship. They were attacked by killers “in so 
determined a manner that, although they were 
frequently lanced, cut with boat-spades, they 
took the dead animals away from their human 
captors, and hauled them under water out of 
sight.” 
Many whalers have experienced this. I once 
boarded a whale ship in Alaskan waters, where 
the captain told me with tears in his eyes, of 
the loss of a whale in this manner a few days 
before. His boat crews could do nothing in 
defense of their prize, which was actually torn 
to pieces and sunk, the numerous big killers 
coming to the surface repeatedly witii its flesh 
in their mouths. This happened under tire eyes 
of all hands. The tale was told so graphically 
that I have often regretted not having recorded 
the details in full at the time. 
All marine animals fear the killer. I once 
landed from the U. S. S. Albatross, on Light¬ 
house Rock, south of the Alaska peninsula, to 
kill one of the large sea lions found there, for 
the National Museum. While the sailors were 
at work removing the skin, we noticed that the 
sea lions remained on the rocks, notwithstand¬ 
ing their fear of our party. 
Fifty yards off shore were 
two large killers whose 
dorsal fins projected three 
or four feet above the sur¬ 
face. None of the sea lions 
ventured into the water, 
their fear of the killers ex¬ 
ceeding their fear of man. 
Founded on erroneous ob¬ 
servation of a sea fight of 
c o m m o n occurrence, the 
swordfish and the thresher 
shark still get the credit of 
attacking and defeating the 
colossal whale which is not 
only inoffensive, but which 
neither of them could eat. 
The swordfish uses his 
two-edged sword with rapid 
side-wise blows among 
schools of small fishes, stun¬ 
ning numbers of them which 
he afterwards gathers into 
his entirely toothless mouth. 
It would be impossible for the swordfish to 
bite out a mouthful of whale meat for the 
reason that it is not only toothless but that its 
upper jaw being extended into a long sword, it 
could not bring its jaws to bear on an object 
as bulky as a whale. Imagine the swordfish 
“biting off mouthfuls of the whale’s tongue,” as 
it has been said to do, with such an encum¬ 
brance on its upper jaw as a four-foot sword 
sticking out straight ahead. The sword on the 
wall before me is almost that long. 
The thresher has similar limitations. Like the 
swordfish, it is a feeder on schools of small 
fishes, which it herds together with much 
“threshing” of its remarkably long tail. It is 
not a large-mouthed shark and its teeth are of 
small size, not at all adapted for large prey. 
While the tail of the thresher is as long as all 
the rest of its body, and effective in rounding- 
up the schools of mackerel, bonito, herring, 
menhaden, blue fish and squid—just what the 
swordfish is known to eat—it could have but 
little effect on the hide of the great cetacean. 
Captain Atwood, shipmaster and fisherman, 
at a meeting of the Boston Society of Natural 
History said threshers were abundant at Pro- 
vincetown, and that he placed no confidence 
whatever in the stories current of attacks on 
the wdiales by the thresher. He also said that 
KILLER WHALE (ORCA GLADIATOR) 
Photograph by Lawrence Mott at Catalina Island, California. 
