#Pseudorca

[namu-the-orca]

What color are orcas' eyes?

In short, mostly brown. In long, it's a bit complicated as Killer whales (and for that matter, all cetaceans) have multi coloured eyes! Unlike us humans, who have a singular coloured iris and a white sclera, cetacean eyes come in more flavours. Their iris is circled by a pale ring of varying colour, and the surrounding sclera is more often than not coloured too, sometimes even bi-colored. I have actually been working on a cetacean eye-colour-chart thing so I have some neat illustrations ready.

Here you can see the components that make up a cetacean's eye. It should be noted though that when relaxed, the eyelids cover much of it, leaving almost only the iris visible. As an example: a Harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena). On the left a clear view of the eye in its totality; on the right as visible in life.

Onto the whale in question. All cetaceans have beautiful brown irises: in many it is an unbelievably rich reddish hue when sunlight hits it directly. In shadow or underwater it looks more subdued though. Then comes the pale ring which in Killer whales is quite variable: in some animals it is very pale, almost white, while others have beautiful bright blue rings. The sclera appears two-toned in blackfish as far as I've seen. Killer whales have a rather modest dark brown area of sclera around the iris-pale-ring-combo, with the surrounding "base" sclera reddish pink. For comparison, False killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens) have a bit more substantive dark brown sclera area, with the surrounding sclera a striking bright red.

I hope this answers your question! This makes me want to finish this chart haha so maybe that'll come soon-ish in its totality.

[artofsoul1999]

I was gonna share a painting with this character in it, but I remembered that I never shared her design. This is Koharu, one of my false killer whale OCs.

[yolandamargaritaperaza]

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[pazzesco]

Turns out, I wasn't the only one fishing for Mahi Mahi...

[inatungulates]

False killer whale Pseudorca crassidens

Observed by pelonchino, CC BY-NC

[unofficial-sean]

We are renaming the false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens). Cast your vote:

[shopcat]

no one is into animal hybrids well that's okay because i will make you into animal hybrids. i just find it interesting and cool and like if unicorns were real sometimes it's like Wow... but also u can be on some level aware of the ethicality i guess bc some ppl crossbreed animals for i dunno taking advantage or entertainment purposes or just like arrogance and stupidity BUT sometimes it's just like the scientific spirit i suppose i don't know. and there's a difference between like hybrids with fertile young vs infertile but just because the hybrid offspring is infertile doesn't always mean it's unhealthy or i suppose immoral ? its just to do with chromosomes n junk it's all complicated ... and i just like them and like seeing what they look like i used to be the kid who believed in that cat/rabbit hybrid hoax though which doesn't help

but it does just happen in the wild a bunch bc a coyote just thinks it found the worlds biggest coyote girlfriend but really his girlfriend is a wolf. which is so funny to me. I love them so much.

and then u have something like a buffalo and a cow which r fertile . and a false killer whale and bottlenose dolphin

all members of the ursidae family can healthily produce offspring which rules but i think this second picture might just be a normal grizzly bear. but the first is a polar grizzly <3

then there's savannah cats and bengal cats which i think everyone knows about but make me so mad to be honest every time i see a serval in someone's house i wish they dropped dead it is HIGHLY unethical and just stupid even if i do sort of get wanting to have your own mini tiger it's just STUPID and rich people bullshit and 9/10 times when they can't look after the wild animal in their home it ends up being dumped + very rarely are they being taken care of + it is abusive by nature to simply own any wild animal even if you're a fucking trained animal handler or whatever which also goes for idiots who keep sugar gliders or like raccoons + letting it interact with domestic pets is WILD. and most of them end up as rescues in sanctuaries like with every other exotic pet and actually there's entire debates on whether it's ethical to even have sanctuaries where the keeper directly interacts with the animal and "no touch" facilities i believe r more ethical and the best option for the animal.. basically if u see a dumbass tiktok where someone is petting a panther taking advantage of the spectacle it creates call them a cunt in the comments okay

anyway. these domestic wild hybrids DO have health problems though it is interesting that the savannah cat female offspring is fertile to begin with... it's similar to wolfdogs in the levels of wild vs domestic being ranked 1 to .. 4 ? i think (but wolfdogs i don't actually know much about... they r more common tho) so like an f1 savannah cat is basically just a smaller serval which are HUGE wild cats to begin with and then it goes on in generations until it is essentially a house cat . so dismissing everything i just said it is interesting to see

then with other big cats all members of the panthera genus can interbreed but all produce infertile male offspring and would never occur naturally in the wild. the females are fertile though which is also interesting i think... they also like most hybrids have different characteristics dependent on the parent species and sex so a male tiger and female lion (tigon) would create something different than a female tiger and a male lion (liger). which is also cool hashtag genetics. these are a female and male liger

[lightningspam-photography]

False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens)

taken in the Pacific Ocean somewhere off the coast of California

status: near threatened

Last photo I have of these magnificent creatures. Thought its nearly impossible to tell in the photos due to a lack of context, these animals do reach up to 16 feet in length if female or up to 20 feet in length if male.

[kay-rev]

Comecei um novo caderno de desenhos com uma falsa orca

[mhaccunoval]

i'm ;P ! and i'm :D ! THE (C)ILLY CETACEAN BROTHERS !!

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Hey! I’ve seen some people I follow on insta spreading a post about how to get the SWIMS act passed so naturally I had to go and rant on my stories about it lol. I’m trying to find pro-cap studies and articles about cetacean captivity, but no matter what I type into google it just feeds me PETA bull shit. Do you have any good studies or articles you know of that I could share?

I always recommend the Cetacean Welfare Study (which is actually a collection of studies) as a starting place. It mainly focuses on bottlenose dolphins, since they’re obviously the most well-represented in aquaria, but includes belugas and Pacific white-sided dolphins as well. The SWIMS Act doesn’t target bottlenose or lags (in this iteration at least), so only belugas would really be affected by it.

SeaWorld is the only facility that still has orcas, and they already ended their own breeding program, and pilot whales and pseudorcas are not bred (in fact, there aren’t any pseudorcas left in North American aquariums). So the bill is just… stupid. Performative. It does absolutely nothing to address the issues actually impacting whales in the wild. But it does interfere with the efforts of accredited aquariums like Mystic, Georgia, and Shedd to provide research that will aid endangered wild beluga populations.

Several versions of the bill have already been shot down, and the last time it was presented, the AZA president stated that “opposition will be broad and strong to this SWIMS Act.” I don’t anticipate the act getting much further than it did last time, but I’m going to keep an eye on it.

[antiqueanimals]

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, vol. 11, Mammals II. 1972. Illustrated by Peter Barrett.

Beaked whales;

1.) Baird's beaked whale (Berardius bairdii)

2.) Strap-toothed whale (Mesoplodon layardii)

3.) True's beaked whale (Mesoplodon mirus)

4.) Sowerby's beaked whale (Mesoplodon bidens)

5.) Northern bottlenose whale (Hyperoodon ampullatus)

White whales and narwhals;

6.) Beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas)

7.) Narwhal (Monodon monoceros)

Long snouted dolphins;

8.) Rough-toothed dolphin (Steno bredanensis)

9.) Atlantic humpback dolphin (Sousa teuszii)

True dolphins;

10.) Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus)

11.) Common dolphin (Delphinus delphis)

12.) Striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba)

13.) Atlantic white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus acutus)

14.) Common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)

15.) Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus)

16.) Northern right whale dolphin (Lissodelphis borealis)

Pilot and killer whales;

17.) Long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas)

18.) Pygmy killer whale (Feresa attenuata)

19.) Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris)

20.) Orca (Orcinus orca)

21.) False killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens)

Commerson's dolphins;

22.) Commerson's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii)

Porpoises;

23.) Harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena)

24.) Spectacled porpoise (Phocoena dioptrica)

25.) Dall's porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli)

26.) Indo-Pacific finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides)

[artofsoul1999]

Almost forgot to upload again. Oops.

Anyway, here's a painting of Guillaume with his pseudorca friends, Keto and Koharu.

[inatungulates]

False killer whale Pseudorca crassidens

Observed by rafael4grampus, CC BY-NC

[jumpintothewaves]

Weirdo Wednesday

Heyyy it’s that’s time again. This week’s weirdo is…

The false killer whale: Pseudorca crassidens

It’s really not this weirdo’s fault that we couldn’t tell the difference between them and their cousin, the orca. Their skulls were so similar that taxonomists classified them under the same genus as orcas. Scientists at the time thought these weirdos were extinct since they had only seen bones, but then a carcass washed up on the shores of Denmark in 1861! Of course, when you get a good look at them you may think it looks more like a porpoise or a dolphin! At 19ft long and 5,000lbs (for males), the false killer whale is the 3rd largest dolphin in existence! They can be found in tropical water around the world in superpods upwards of 500 members!!

A highly social weirdo

The false killer whale is highly intelligent and loves to socialize, not just with its own species, but with other marine mammals as well! They’ve been observed forming pods with bottlenose dolphins and staying in these found family dynamics for years. Some of these groupings are practical, as in they hunt the same kind of food together, and some are more meaningful bonds. False killer whales and bottlenose dolphins have been seen mating, both in heterosexual and homosexual pairs. There have been instances of a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin hybrid, and it was named a wolphin! This relationship does not always extend to every member of the bottlenose dolphin family, however. False killer whales can also prey on dolphins if they choose to (and they have!). These weirdos are more commonly seen eating large fish like tuna and mahi mahi. Their sharp teeth have been known to skin to their prey, a behavior not common in cetaceans. 

Conservation

The false killer whale spends its time in the deep sea, making it a difficult weirdo to study. Their population numbers are largely based on the superpod that lives near the Hawaiian Islands, which is decreasing. Overfishing has effected the amount of fish they can hunt, and they often resort to stealing from fishermen. This can result in entanglements, swallowing of fishhooks, and unpleasant encounters with the fishermen. Another big problem is noise pollution. Our noises from boats and things in the ocean travel fast and loud in water. Cetaceans like the false killer whale rely on sound to communicate and are sensitive to certain frequencies. They can become disoriented and more susceptible to being beached, entanglement, or even shipstrike if they can’t escape the sound. While all of these concerns are valid, we still don’t have a clear idea of how many of these weirdos exist today and if they’re in immediate danger of going extinct. We’ve been wrong about their population numbers before, after all!

This video shows bottlenose dolphins and false killer whales swimming together. You can totally spot the difference!

[cosmicanger]

False killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens)