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Orcas Quotes

Browse 37 quotes about Orcas.

Orcas Quotes

“Sea World orcas work as many as eight shows a day, 365 days a year. In the ocean, these whales can swim up to ninety miles a day. In captivity, the tanks are measured in feet. In the ocean, orcas have highly evolved and cohesive matriarchal cultures. Generations of family members, combining both females and males, spend their entire lives together—with each family, or pod, communicating its own unique dialect. In captivity, little to none of this exists. Orca culture is effectively destroyed.”

CultureStressAnimalsExploitationWhalesCaptivityOrcasAquariumSea World
Book:Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance
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“They (orcas) certainly display extraordinary levels of social support, including babysitting for each other's calves and caring for disabled individuals. Giles told me of a male orca from a transient mammal-eating pod, outside of the southern residents that has scolioses, yet is a thriving member of his family. 'They bring him food' she told me. 'It's hard for him to keep up with them, bur they loop back and bring him chunks of seal or whatever it is they've just killed. In a lot of human cultures they would leave that individual behind.' I can't help but think about how many of our human leaders would benefit from a paralimbic lobe transplant - to become more like these wise and compassionate matriarchs, with their unfathomable emotions and supportive, socially inclusive society.”

SocietySocialismDisabilityOrcasBetter Humans
Book:Bitch: On the Female of the Species
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“The orca’s big brain was bigger than he had hoped—five times the size of a human’s and weighing in at nearly fifteen pounds. And this was from a young whale, not a mature adult. The brain was also more complicated than McGeer had imagined—more complicated than a human brain. Dolphin brains were impressive, but this brain was spectacular.”

InspirationalScienceWhalesMarine LifeOrcasKiller WhalesMoby DollOrca Brain
Book:The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
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“Human groups who find themselves hunting in the same territory are almost expected to fight. For the most part, regardless of the continent they’re on or their culture, it’s rare when they don’t battle over land or resources. But the orca culture is more ancient than ours and, apparently, more civilized. Killer whales don’t just share food; they share the same sectors of the seas without challenging each other to determine dominance. This is true for orca families found in every ocean in the world.”

OceanAnimalsMarine LifeOrcasKiller WhalesOrca Families
Book:The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
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“Regardless of how scientists may feel about respecting the history of the name, there’s no world in which “killer” sounds like a safe species to swim with. If you’re on their menu, the name is accurate, but if you’re not—and we’re clearly not—it’s an archaic holdover from an ancient era that makes it harder to save this vital species.”

NamesAnimalsMarine LifeOrcasKiller Whales
Book:The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
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“Maybe moving away would make him not so disorganized. (He doubted himself.) He would send pictures to his mom of his new room, showing not only his tidiness, but also his self-sufficiency and that he could make ends meet by himself. Which would surprise her, maybe even offend her; yes, she would have been wrong about him—because Randolfo could take care of himself, he thought with a sense of pride.”

RelationshipsFamily MembersMoving AwayFamily ConflictMothers And SonsOrcasExchange Program
Book:Dona
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“We now know that killer whales are one of the very few mammalian species that can learn new sounds and reproduce them. Dogs and cats, for example—there’s not a chance you could teach a dog to meow or a cat to bark. It’s a very rare ability to learn sounds and reproduce them. We can do it, as humans. Some primates can. Some of the whales can. The calls Moby Doll made in 1964—we still hear today from his kin group that still exists out there. If all roads lead to Rome, all oceans lead to Moby Doll.”

OrcasKiller WhalesMoby DollOrca HistoryOrca SoundsWhale Sounds
Book:The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
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“People had considered this the most fearsome creature on the planet. The most vicious. The most predatory. Without any rivals. It could beat anything in the ocean, so, therefore, it qualified as the most feared of all beasts. Totally wrong. So I guess Moby Doll changed the world’s attitudes towards killer whales. Instead of seeing a killer—a savage monster like Moby Dick—the world met a cuddly companion, Moby Doll.”

WhalesOrcasKiller WhalesMoby Doll
Book:The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
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“Orcas and some other large whales have spindle neurons in their brains. These are cells that process emotion humans thought existed only in apes and us. Spindle neurons have been called the cells that make us human. They're the part of the brain that deals with complex emotions like love, guilt, grief and even embarrassment. Since these are the cells that allow us to feel deeply, isn't it likely they do the same for orcas?”

AnimalsOrcasKiller WhalesOrca Emotions
Book:Orcas Everywhere: The Mystery and History of Killer Whales
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“Tragically, the average life expectancy during this era for captive orcas stood between one to four years. Aquariums often went through a whole series of whales before just one of them made it into adolescence. Today, the life expectancy of captive killer whales has improved: rising to about ten years. Yet this is still a far cry from the thirty to sixty years that orcas can live in the ocean.”

FreedomOceanCaptivityAquariumsOrcasKiller WhalesSea World
Book:Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance
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“Then Jack Hanna joined the fray: “How are you going to love something, Larry, unless you see something? You can’t love something and save something unless you see it.” Naomi had heard this argument before. It was ridiculous on its face, she thought. What about dinosaurs? People, and especially kids, were crazy about dinosaurs. They loved them, without ever having laid eyes on a single one.”

CaptivityOrcasKiller Whales
Book:Death at SeaWorld by David Kirby (9-Oct-2013) Paperback
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“Chronicling the passage of whales has led me to an understanding that we, as a species, now sand at a crossroads. We can face the possibility of our own extinction and work to avert it, or we can flow the more traditional path of earths organisms and fall blindly over the edge. If there's one trait that characterised human beings, it's the will to survive. This, I believe, will motivate us to work with the natural world rather than opposite it, which is all we need to do to give the children of earth - of all species - the opportunity to thrive.”

PeopleHopeAnimalsConservationZoologyOrcas
Book:Listening to Whales: What the Orcas Have Taught Us
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“Sea World was treading carefully. Park officials stated repeatedly how essential and valuable Tilikum had been to their operations. This is true. Zoos and circuses are a business, and Blackstone paid 2.3 billion dollars for its purchase. The most productive employees in that business, in terms of labor and revenue, are the orcas themselves. Tilikum has performed for almost nineteen years in Orlando, sired thirteen calves, and produced in the range of a billion dollars in revenue. Nevertheless, Sea World did not believe that Tilikum had earned the right to retire. None of that billion dollars would be used to build an ocean sanctuary for older captive orcas. They do not deserve it.”

GreedAnimalsExploitationEquityAnimal WelfareCaptivityOrcasSea World
Book:Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance
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“Orlagh waits for us in a choppy ocean, accompanied by her daughter and a pod of knights mounted on seals and sharks and all manner of sharp-toothed sea creatures. She herself sit on an orca and is dressed as though ready for battle. Her skin is covered in shiny silvery scales that seem both to be metallic and to have grown from her skin. A helmet of bone and teeth hides her hair. Nicasia is beside her, on a shark. She has no tail today, her long legs covered in armour of shell.”

FantasyHolly BlackThe Folk Of The AirSharksSealsThe Wicked KingOrcasNicasiaSea CreaturesOrlagh
Book:The Wicked King
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