A posterior view of a killer showing the high dorsal fin. In the male the dorsal is over six feet in height but in the female it is only four feet.
Whale after whale rose under the ice, setting it rocking fiercely; luckily Ponting kept his feet and was able to fly to security. By an extraordinary chance also, the splits had been made around and between the dogs, so that neither of them fell into the water. Then it was clear that the whales shared our astonishment, for one after another their huge hideous heads shot vertically into the air through the cracks which they had made. As they reared them to a height of 6 or 8 feet it was possible to see their tawny head markings, their small glistening eyes, and their terrible array of teeth—by far the largest and most terrifying in the world. There cannot be a doubt that they looked up to see what had happened to Ponting and the dogs.
The latter were horribly frightened and strained to their chains whining; the head of one killer must certainly have been within 5 feet of one of the dogs.
After this, whether they thought the game insignificant, or whether they missed Ponting is uncertain, but the terrifying creatures passed on to other hunting grounds, and we were able to rescue the dogs, and, what was even more important, our petrol—5 or 6 tons of which was waiting on a piece of ice which was not split away from the main mass.
Of course, we have known well that killer whales continually skirt the edge of the floes and that they would undoubtedly snap up any one who was unfortunate enough to fall into the water; but the facts that they could display such deliberate cunning, that they were able to break ice of such thickness (at least 2½ feet), and that they could act in unison, were a revelation to us. It is clear that they are endowed with singular intelligence, and in future we shall treat that intelligence with every respect.[[11]]
[11]. “Scott’s Last Expedition.” Arranged by Leonard Huxley. New York, 1913, Vol. I, pp. 65–66.
Dr. Charles H. Townsend, Director of the New York Aquarium, tells of an interesting experience on the Pribilof Islands, which illustrates the terror in which the killers are held by other water mammals. He was collecting a number of the great Steller’s sea lions for the Smithsonian Institution and was shooting the animals, which were on land, with a repeating rifle.
The sea lions began rushing toward the water in terror when suddenly the high dorsal fin of a killer whale appeared a few fathoms offshore. The sea lions stopped short and could not be forced into the water, preferring to face the unknown danger of the rifle rather than certain death in the jaws of an enemy which from earliest babyhood they had been taught to fear.
The killer belongs to the dolphin family, of which it is the largest member, reaching a length of from twenty to thirty feet. These animals are found in almost every ocean of the world and, although several species have been described, probably there is but one, Orca orca. The dorsal fin of the male is six feet high while that of the female is but three and one-half or four feet, and this has led to the naming of specimens which have proved to be only the male and female of the same species.