Something I learnt today.....

Killer whales can be divided into two different populations: Mammal eatting orcas and fish etting orcas. The fish eatting killer whales don't eat any mammals and the mammal eatting killer whales don't eat any fish. Apparently seals can tell the difference between the mammal eating killer whales and the fish eatting killer whales by the sounds they make. Different families of killer whales apparently have different dialects and some even have the appility to learn new sounds outside their normal dialect. (eg. this one orca could imitate the sound of a seal- it was a fish eatting orca and I guess it liked to socialize with seals.) What's really strange is that the fish eatting populations and the mammal eatting populations don't even live that far appart from each other and I'm sure share some of the same hunting ground.

Interesting. I wonder what makes one family/group of killer whales prefer a certain diet over another. Is it taste or just leant behaviour? And if it is learnt behaviour, how and why did the split begin? Does their unique dialects have anything to do with it? Can this split be evidence of orcas having different cultures?