Whale Of A Notion

WBZ's Jordan Rich says wild orcas are delivering "gifts" to humans and hover for a "response." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Upside with Jordan A dose
of good news because it's a big world out there.
Fascinating story from the Journal of Comparative Psychology. They have
documented several incredible cases of wild orcas. Those are the
big whales doing something perhaps unexpected, delivering prey and other
objects to human beings. What seems like the offering of gifts. Now,

(00:21):
this has been going on for decades, with orcas presenting
people with fish and stingrays, seaweed and more. What makes
it even cooler is that these huge black and white
mammals of the sea don't simply drop an object nearby
a human and swim away, but rather they hover nearby
as if waiting for a response, or at least to
see what the human will do with the gift. In
some cases, according to the study, people accepted these gifts

(00:44):
only to toss them back, and the orcas retrieved them
and brought them back again. Scientists think it could be
something deeper than just curiosity on the part of these whales.
The giant creatures of the sea might just want to
be friends, and that's the Upside with Jordan WZ Boston's
News Radio