Summary

Tahlequah, the orca who gained global attention in 2018 for carrying her dead calf for 17 days across 1,000 miles, has given birth to a new calf, designated J61.

The Center for Whale Research expressed concern for J61’s survival, as orca calves face high mortality in their first year.

Tahlequah, part of the endangered Southern Resident orcas, now has three surviving offspring.

With only 73 whales left in the population, threats like pollution, food scarcity, and contaminants remain critical challenges to their survival.

  • tb_
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    1 day ago

    From a quick search: there haven’t been conclusive studies, but orcas can as old as 30 or 40.

    So, given that “dog years” are essentially the life span of a human divided by the life span of a dog, “orca years” would be twice or thrice that of a human.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 day ago

        Average human lifespans 75 Average orca lifespan say 35

        75 / 35 is 2.21

        Assuming that math is equivalent to dog years

        A human year would be 2.2 years to each orca year

        So if we decide that same thing works for distance?

        That would be like 451.1 miles for a human to carry their dead offspring?

        But I find it would be more approximate to use body size as the modifier for perceived distance?

        So let’s take the average height of 5.5 feet for an adult human woman

        Dirty google search of about 20 feet averages length of adult female orca

        So 20/5.5 gives us 3.63 orca to 1 human foot

        Making the answer about:

        275.48 orca miles (sizes based) Or 451.1 orca miles (lifespan based)

      • @AngryCommieKender
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        21 day ago

        Well they have an average migration pattern that is 7,000 miles round trip. So 1/7th of an orca migratory pattern?

    • @pyre
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      11 day ago

      sorry for the confusion, I meant length of distance, not lifespan. so not orca years, but orca kilometers. i assume one orca kilometer is longer than a human kilometer since orcas are larger and probably they travel faster in water than we do on land on average. and I assume there’s no such thing as an orca mile because everyone keeps saying orcas are smart creatures.