According to the nonprofit organization Orca Network, a killer whale which is presumably as old as the Titanic has been spotted last week off the coast of Washington state.
The killer whale which is known by the scientists as J12 but nicknamed Granny is considered to be 105 years old and has been photographed while swimming and jumping with other orcas.
Granny, which according to a news station was alive one year before the Titanic took its trip across the Atlantic is supposed to be born in 1911. According to these findings, Granny is the oldest living killer whale.
When the killer whale was spotted, she was jumping in and out of the water. This behavior is usually a sign of playfulness and is considered a directive towards high health status. Orcas are extremely fast swimmers and have been recorded at speeds of up to 54km/h.
Female orcas usually don’t exceed the limit of fifty years old, and only a few of them overcome the age of a hundred. Scientists started to follow Granny in 1971 when she was already sixty years old and surpassed her age limit.
The Orca Network says that the margin of error on appraising the killer whale’s age is 12 years.
Due to their similarity, there are some ways to tell orcas apart. Among these, we must mention their scars or margins. Granny, for example, has a half-moon shaped notch and a marking on her dorsal fin.
The killer whale or orca belongs to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. Some feed exclusively on fish, while others hunt marine mammals such as seals and dolphins. Their sophisticated hunting techniques and vocal behaviors are often specific to a particular group and passed across generations.
At up to nearly 10 meters long, male orcas are larger than females and have a tall dorsal fin that can go up to 2 meters height. Female length is about 20% less, and the curved dorsal fin is less than half the height of the males.
Granny is generally seen in waters around Canada and Washington.
Unfortunately, the orca populations in the US and Canadian Pacific Northwest, Iceland and Japan were negatively impacted from the 1960s to the 1980s by the live capture industry.
Image source: Wikipedia
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