Learned defense strategies & yacht-ramming behavior

33:11Is the fourth hypo hypothesis true or any of these? And what they did was modeling. They did mathematical modeling to see how that rate would decrease based on these three hypotheses. And the one that had the best fit was the one where the whales adapted, learned, and shared defensive knowledge too rapidly for genetic evolution. >> The point is the the rate of decrease of efficacy of the hunting was so steep that it couldn't have just been from personal experience because there wasn't enough volume for personal experience to to be the the the trigger. there's not enough juveniles in the population spread of whales for it to just be the juveniles. And it can't be that they're just that good because in other areas they were doing just fine. And so like

33:51these other three things don't account for the rate of decrease in >> and and so the entire population in the Pacific learn >> that okay when you got these whales and here's what they would do. Um usually they do defensive huddling. Okay. So if orcas come up, >> what you do is like kind of what elephants do where you huddle around your young and you try to bite the the people around. That slows you down and that is super effect ineffective against boats, >> right? You come up on a boat, they're already slowed down. Great, just, [laughter] you know, go at it. So pretty soon they realize that's not going to work. And in their wher journals, they showed that the whales abandoned that traditional defensive huddling and they went for new tactics. For example, if they know which way the the wind is,

34:33just swim opposite the direction of the wind. >> Oh, cuz they know we can't >> they figured out that these guys that these guys can only go in the direction of the wind with their big ship, >> right? And so they they just like swim in the other direction. Evasive deep diving >> resurface like many miles away. >> Yep. >> Away from the ship. >> Yep. >> Right. And some people just started doing aggressive defensing. If like they they were cornered, they would just like start attacking. You know, the best defense is the attack. >> You know what's funny is the social learning from this era might still be persisting, which is why the yachts are getting >> Yes. I was going to say, and that's the final that's the final photo. It's like

35:14it's like now we've got we've got [laughter] this thing coming back where the orcas are now all around Spain and Portugal. They're just like attacking yachts, right? And it's become like kind of an epidemic of orca on yacht violence. Yep. Right. Yep. And we don't have harpoons on those yachts. >> And that also looks like it's a cultural thing because it started one day and then everyone started doing it all across the North Sea, all across the the Portugal through the Straits of Gibralar. I wouldn't be surprised if not all of the Mediterranean is starting it, you know. And what's interesting is at the time of when whaling was happening, >> you have sort of a a reason for the behavior change that's identifiable. >> Yeah. It's not necessarily obvious or

35:57clear in this recent >> Yeah, it's not necessarily obvious. There was there was one hypothesis that was saying that like, oh, because we have like so much tuna in the ocean now because we've curbed fishing >> that the orcas are just getting bored and so with their time they're doing this. I don't buy that. I think that's a fisherman lobby >> like [laughter] paying some special interest group to be like, "Hey, we have too much fish and so we can just like start fishing again." Uh, another one that I thought was pretty likely was that like they've recognized that boats are fisherman boats. And the same reason why you go after the shark is why you go after the boat. It's a competing predator that's like depleting my resources. Like I was going up against a school of tuna and now half of them are gone and there was a boat right there.

36:37>> Right there. Yeah. So like screw that guy. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. No, that makes a lot of sense. >> That that makes a lot more sense to me. Um, but I I just think like these kinds of stories are so interesting at and so capable of sorting sort of putting humans in their place when it comes to uniqueness. >> Yeah. >> Like we always think that like oh culture is very unique to us, right? Cognition cognition is not unique. >> Yep. >> Um more and more I I mean I think it's pretty obvious that consciousness is not unique to humans. I think a lot of people out there agree and now culture is not unique, right? Feelings are not unique. We can see animals in pain,

37:18>> right? >> It's Yeah. It's it's quite humbling that like and we've got now scientific backing. >> Yeah. Right. Right. For for that. I mean, this is the whole there's a whole sort of culture of no longer eating like calamari >> because this the idea is like you have this highly intelligent conscious >> Yeah. >> creature. Yeah. And there's now this like ethical sort of piece to this like well like you know we don't eat other humans. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Generally speaking. >> Generally speaking. Yeah. It's I mean dude it's it's interesting to me. I mean I I'm I'm a selfish person so I will eat the calamari [laughter] cuz it tastes so good. But at the same time I will acknowledge that like yeah it's there's

37:58it's iffy here. And you know it's it but this is I I think what's interesting is like we're now getting more research studies particularly because we also like again have like this multimodal >> systems that are able to sort of track in ways where we get a more robust data set where we can now draw more deeper conclusions uh because of that. And it's it's not surprising to anyone who watched Free Willie um that uh orcas are incredibly intelligent. >> That's exactly right. >> And potentially have culture. Uh it's why uh >> or if you've seen that documentary um >> about the SeaWorld Orca, that's just like grueling. I I haven't visited a single aquatic theme park after watching that.

38:39>> You know how they're solving you know how they're solving their uh because there's they're clearly struggling for business. But um the uh the SeaWorld the SeaWorld or AJ whatever the brand is in San Diego >> this summer they had a summer series of concerts with like Bow and Lil like all these OG like so you have like these rappers like on the stage that's on the water like at [laughter] SeaWorld. Oh god. Sold out. >> Unbel Walk a flock of fame. Like it was >> it did look fun. And so look, if you want to change the venue from holding animals in captivity to a concert venue.

39:19>> Oh yeah. Then Okay. I thought I thought they were doing it with >> No, no, no. Yeah. I was like, jeez. [laughter] >> Waka flocka. I know you got flipping over. >> Yeah, >> because they have no they're not getting people to come for that. I'll come to those. >> I think that's a great offramp. Yeah, >> we would love to see more summer series and converting these places into concert venues. Fantastic. Um, story number two. That was a great one. >> Yeah, it was cool. >> Uh, Frontiers in Marine Science. >> Uh, we're moving on to our third story, which is about civet [ __ ] coffee. >> Yeah. No, literally [ __ ] out coffee. >> If you go to Starbucks and you think inflation has made your coffee expensive now there's $80 cups of coffee.