Watch Orca Hunt Seal With Rare and Chillingly Precise Hunting Technique

A pod of killer whales has been filmed stalking and catching a seal by slowly breaking the ice that the victim was sitting on by making waves. As shown during Episode 1 ("Frozen Worlds") in the BBC's new Frozen Planet II series, which is presented by Sir David Attenborough, the group of four orcas works together to pen in a scared-looking Weddell seal in Antarctica. The technique they use to break up the ice floe the seal is hiding on is called "wave washing," according to the show. It is used by only about 100 killer whales in the Antarctic and is passed down through the generations from the social group's matriarch. In the clip, the whales' waves break up the ice, eventually knocking the seal off into the water. Once the seal is in the water, the pod of orcas uses another technique to confuse the victim: They blow bubbles to disorient it, making it easier to catch. Orcas, the largest members of the dolphin family, are highly intelligent and social mammals. Around 50,000 of them are thought to be living in the wild, and between 25,000 and 27,000 reside in the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica. They live in large groups of between 10 and 20, with a complicated social hierarchy topped by the eldest females, who are the mothers of the families in the group. These older females usually live to around 50 years old, sometimes up to 80.

Also called killer whales, orcas hunt in these close-knit groups, working together to entrap and eat their prey. They are known to be precise and efficient hunters. Several great white sharks that washed up in South Africa with only their livers removed were suspected to be the handiwork of a single pair of orcas, as the fatty liver is their favorite organ. "These killer whale groups live for human life spans or longer, and so they hunt together cooperatively for decades and decades," Robert Pitman, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute, told National Geographic. "You can learn a lot about how to work together when you practice together as a team." The passing of behaviors among members of a social group is a rare occurrence in wild animals, but it is more common in species considered to be more intelligent. One recent example was seen in cockatoos in Australia, where the birds learned from one another how to open garbage cans.

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Other famous occurrences of animals learning from one another include meerkats teaching their pups to handle scorpions. Also, orca matriarchs teach the younger whales to hunt by "stranding"—briefly beaching themselves to reach prey on land. The "wave washing" technique was filmed for Frozen Planet II using lightweight drones, which enabled scientists to see the orcas coordinate hunting from a new angle.