I recently got to visit Alaska and see and learn about orcas. I knew a little bit about them before, but I don’t think I’d realized how _smart_ they are. In a talk I attended by Michelle Nussey, I learned that they can work together to kill even an enormous blue whale – by drowning it. Not only that, they practice this technique together, with one of them pretending to be the whale. Thrill along to David Attenborough’s narration:
They can also swim in tandem to create a bow wave to knock a seal off an ice flow, and more:
Michelle also noted that they will sometimes deliberately beach themselves, so that they can snatch and devour prey that thinks it is safe on the land. She added, maybe only half-joking, “If orcas ever grow legs, we’re in trouble.”
Apparently they have even attacked and eaten moose. (This was also when I learned that moose like to swim and will dive up to 15 feet to eat tasty aquatic plants – but is it really worth the risk, swimming where there are ORCAS?)
Finally, Michelle shared that orcas are one of the few non-human species that experience menopause. Apparently it is quite unusual for female mammals to get any downtime at all from fertility, until they die. So then I wondered… does this mean that orcas have periods? (Menopause is the end of menstruation.). It turns out, no – it’s a misnomer to refer to this phase as “menopause”, because they never had periods to start with. Instead, it is technically a “postreproductive life phase”. Scientists have studied orcas to try to figure out what this (rare) shared phenomena might tell us about humans:
“It suggests that intervention should focus not only on restoring or mimicking ovarian function but also on the whole organism’s overall long-term health. This means that menopause should not be regarded as only a loss of fertility and ovarian function but as a transition from one evolutionary function to another.” (“Menopause in nonhuman mammals: What does it mean for the gynecologist?”, 2025)
That is, maybe there are good reasons to go through hormonal changes and enjoy life that doesn’t revolve around reproduction. Thanks for this nudge, orcas! I’m still creeped out by your hunting tactics, though.
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The other day, I discovered an enormous wasp nest (about 14″ in diameter) in a tree next to my house:
The next morning, Google helped me discover Dan Scollard, who comes out to remove wasps from homes, humanely “sends them to sleep” in a cooler full of dry ice, then donates them to a lab that extracts the venom for use in allergy shots. (!)
When he arrived, he said, “Oh, that’s a beauty. A lot of people say they found a nest as big as a basketball, but yours actually IS.”
My nest was constructed and occupied by the bald-faced hornet (which apparently is actually a wasp). Dan told me all about this wasp; he has a real admiration for them. I highly recommend reading about their life cycle and also viewing Dan’s photo gallery! These wasps are a useful part of nature, but risky to have next to your door where you (or unwitting visitors) could be suddenly attacked. Apparently this wasp can be quite aggressive and territorial.
Dan put on all of his gear, then vacuumed up all of the wasps around the nest, waited a bit for more wasps to come home from hunting, did a second vacuuming pass, and clipped the nest from the branch to remove it. He said it would hang it in his backyard so the queen (who had not emerged) could “live out the rest of her days in peace.” He said I could hold the nest with its lurking queen: gosh wow!
What an amazing experience! It’s a joy to meet knowledgeable people who love their subject and use their knowledge to do good in the world. I’m much happier sending these wasps out to help people avoid severe reactions, and the process was so much better than dousing the nest with poison. Thank you, Dan!
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While cleaning my windows today, I removed the screens and made an unpleasant discovery. Some insect had wedged bits of material into little nests around the edges of two window screens. I brushed it off, noticing that each nest looked like brown dried grass with a bright green squishy center. Then I looked more closely at what plopped onto the ground. The bright green bits looked like baby grasshoppers. Were they grasshopper nests? (In the windows?!)
Then a wasp flew up… carrying one of the bright green grasshopper like things, which was a bit larger than it was! It flew to where the screen had been and kept bumping along the window frame looking for the nesting site (presumably). Was it food? What? This is exactly what it looked like:
Some googling brought me to this description of the grass-carrying wasp, an insect I’d never heard of. Apparently they bite off bits of grass to wedge them in “cavities.” They then hunt for tree crickets. When they find a cricket, they sting it, paralyze it, and carry it off to sequester in a grass-lined nest, then lay an egg on it. When the egg hatches, the larva can immediately start eating the cricket. I was nauseated by the description, yet simultaneously felt bad at having cleaned out all the nests, after reading the very sympathetic description of this “beneficial wasp” at the above link. (Apparently ridding the trees of crickets that feast on them is good, and the wasps are also pollinators and not aggressive.)
Still, I don’t really want them in my windows! And I think my forest offers many other hollow woody crevices for the wasps to populate. To me the most salient part of their behavior is the cricket-hunting, paralysis, and egg-laying, but I guess the grass nesting is kind of interesting too (it’s not just for the birds!). I hope they enjoy feasting on the local tree crickets!
So… there’s a faint northern constellation called Camelopardalis. It is so named because someone thought it looked kind of like a giraffe. Which was known as a kamelopardalis, or a camel-leopard, in Greek – because come on guys, it has a long camel-like neck and it also has spots! This cracks me up! :) Words are awesome!
Of course then I had to wonder why we started calling it “giraffe”. Apparently “giraffe” derives from the Arabic word “zarāfah” (fast-walker). So that one’s pretty good, but not nearly as descriptive. I say, bring back the camelopard! Who’s with me?
