KILLER WHALES HAVE NEW WAY TO GET SHARK LIVERS : THEY HEAD BUTT THE SHARKS!

Excerpt: Behavioral ecologist Tristan Guttridge has uncovered how orcas, better known as killer whales, have been able to wipe out populations of white sharks around the world - ripping them apart in highly coordinated strikes from the US to Africa.

'These animals are taking out Jaws... surgically removing their liver and leaving the rest of the animal,' Dr Guttridge said during Discovery's annual Shark Week, in a new special airing Tuesday at 9pm ET.

Shockingly, it appears orcas have learned and taught other whales this deadly behavior by practicing on human sailing boats, wrecking and even capsizing hundreds of boats worldwide.

 YIKES!

Excerpt: In South Africa, dead white sharks began washing ashore with their livers 'surgically extracted.'

Researchers explained that a shark's liver, which makes up 25 percent of their body weight, represents a pure energy feast to a pod of orcas.

Shark livers help the creature store massive amounts of fuel, and are also filled with oils that help the animal control its ability to float. For a great white shark, the liver can weigh hundreds of pounds.

While the great white is a massive predator, orcas are even bigger and can grow to be over 30 feet long and weigh over 14,000 pounds.

DAILY MAIL SCIENCE : ORCAS HUNT SHARK LIVERS

ORCA

 

WHY WON'T THE DEALIEST PREDATOR IN THE OCEAN (ORCA) EAT YOU?

They don't hunt humans.  Do we taste bad?

WHAT ELSE IS HIDING DOWN IN THE ATACAMA TRENCH ? : D CAMANCHACA BUILT FOR VIOLENCE : NEW PREDATOR WITH FRONT LIMBS AND SPRING LOADED CLAWS

POPULAR MECHANICS " NEW PREDATOR FOUND IN ATACAMA TRENCH

Excerpt: while nobody has yet watched D. camanchaca eat, its body is clearly built for violence. It has a slender, fast-looking frame, mouthparts made for shredding rather than filtering, and a pair of oversized, grasping front limbs that work like spring-loaded claws. In most amphipods, those limbs are unremarkable. But in D. camanchaca, they dominate the animal’s front end, which is the anatomical signature of something that grabs living prey instead of waiting for a dead whale to drift down.

At 25,925 feet, the water presses down at roughly 790 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. But the two-inch-long D. camanchaca is able to live there, molting, swimming, and hunting under a load that would flatten most creatures. Precisely how it manages that isn’t yet fully understood.

“This finding underlines the importance of continued deep-ocean exploration particularly in Chile’s front yard,” IMO’s Carolina González, co-lead author of the study, said in a press statement “More discoveries are expected as we continue to study the Atacama Trench.”