Advertisement

A 15-Foot Great White That Just Ate a Dolphin Gets a Lesson in Food Chain Management From a Killer Whale

Shutterstock Images.

Listen, I'm just gonna come right out and say this. Consequences be damned. It might not be considered "Politically Correct." It might upset some of you snowflakes. Maybe you need a "Trigger Warning" so you can go to your "Safe Space" first. But I'm gonna just go right ahead and "Own the Libs." Throw caution to the wind as I say what I'm about to say. 

I am a Speciesist, and I don't care who knows it. 

Yeah, I favor some forms of life over others. Ever since I learned the classification of animals with the acronym King Phillip Can Only Fiddle Good Songs (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species), I've been playing favorites. The closer you get to me and my kind on the Animal Kingdom Classification Chart, the more I've got your back.

Sorry, Sponges and Segmented Worms, but I've got no use for you. Feck off, Horseshoe Crabs and Mollusks, you're nothing to me. Go ahead and "Cancel" me if you want. I dare you to. You don't have the backbone to even try. Literally. 

When push comes to shove in any ecosystem, I'm on Team Mammal. I'm favoring my warm-blooded brothers and my sisters who give birth to live young and feed them with milk. Which is why I'm celebrating this big victory for our cetacean cousins under the sea. If the shark's carcass ("sharkass?" I'll workshop that) wasn't so grotesquely mutilated as to violate our blog's "No Dead Animals" guidelines, I'd include the photo. But I'll play it safe and opt for this image instead:

Giphy Images.

Daily Mail - A great white shark that washed up on the South African coast had just eaten a dolphin before another even bigger took it out.

Biologist Alison Towner shared photos to social media following the autopsy of the 15-foot-long shark, confirming a 'killer whale predation' was the likely cause of death.

Scientists were called to the scene after a resident stumbled upon the mangled carcass at the Nyara River Mouth on May 28.

The following day, veterinarians finished an examination of its corpse and recovered a common dolphin from its stomach that was neatly severed into four pieces.

The most telltale signs of an orca attack were toothmarks on the creature's head, plus an even more pressing clue - a missing liver. …

Scientists believe orcas are targeting sharks in the area for their livers, and a growing body of evidence suggests that the behavior is becoming increasingly common.

Five great whites washed up in Gansbaai without their livers in 2017. It wasn't until May 2022 that drone footage captured two male orcas hunting the sharks and removing the vital organs with 'surgical precision.'

Take THAT, fish bitches! You enjoy the taste of dolphin?

Giphy Images.

How about a little "killer whale predation" to level the playing field? A bit of apex-on-apex crime, but where nobody's picking on someone their own size. A Serial Killer whale. Going full Hannibal Lector on your liver, minus the legumes and Italian wine. Making it a great day for intelligent mammals everywhere, save for that one dolphin who took one for the team. It's time Discovery Channel starts working on bringing us Orca Week. That's something all us unapologetic Speciesists can get behind.