Asomeone Commissioned A Wholesome Post, So Here Are Some Wholesome Facts About Orcas Aka Killer Whales!

asomeone commissioned a Wholesome Post, so here are some wholesome facts about Orcas aka Killer Whales! look at this smiling face

Fact 1: Orcas live their entire lives with their moms! 

Orcas have incredibly complex social structures, comparable only to elephants and higher primates. at the root of orca societies is the matriline–the family group consisting of the eldest female, her daughters and sons, and her daughters’ offspring, and their daughters’ offspring, and so on. Orcas spend their entire lives with their mom and siblings. In fact…

Fact 2: And with their grandmas!

…because they can reach the age of 90, a family group can consist of four generations of orcas living and travelling together!

Fact 3: They have language–and speak in dialects!

Orca vocalizations come in different dialects–because they aren’t just sounds, they’re language! Different groups use language differently, and they pass down these dialects to their kids. in fact…

Fact 4: They learn and pass down knowledge

Both language & complicated behaviors such as hunting techniques get passed down through generations. The communication of knowledge between generations is so complex that it “appears to have no parallel outside humans.” And for the skeptics who don’t think whale vocalization counts as language: 

Fact 5: Orcas speak English too!

ok i’m exaggerating. or am I? A 16-year-old orca named Wikie has recently learned to speak a few words, including ‘hello’, ‘good-bye’, and ‘one, two, three’ 

Everyone tell Wikie she did a good job! She’s working with a trainer who hopes they can one day having rudimentary conversations together. This is in contrast to that one beluga whale who taught themselves to speak just so they could tell divers to fuck off.

and finally, because this is my blog and I get to decide what counts as wholesome:

Fact 6: THEY HUNT MOOSE! KILLER WHALES ARE A NATURAL PREDATOR OF THE MOOSE! THEY HUNT & EAT MOOSES!

Moose are really good divers and apparently they spend enough time underwater that orcas pose a slim but deadly threat. Orcas also occasionally eat dear, and sea birds. Orcas are an apex predator, they can eat basically anything they want, including sharks, squids, and other marine mammals like elephant seals & otters. Top of the food chain baby! This probably feels pretty wholesome to orcas, who don’t have to worry about being attacked by something lower in the pecking order. On that note, have a pic of a baby orca, who has no natural predators and has just learned to breach!

That’s a very happy, very baby orca.

TODAY IT’S A GREAT DAY BECAUSE IT’S MARCH 15th THE DAY WHEN DENZEL CROCKER LOST HIS HAPPINESS AND IT’S ALSO ANNOY SQUIDWARD DAY

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

DIMENSION : DILEMMA JACKET SHOOTING / SCYLLA VERSION — NI-KI

He’s a buff boy…. not a flexible boy.

kim seungmin and the many struggles of aerial yoga