Video shows killer whales hunting young great white sharks to eat their livers

In this Jan. 18, 2014, file photo, endangered orcas from the J-pod swim in Puget Sound west of Seattle, as seen from a federal research vessel that had been tracking the whales. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

Great white sharks often come to mind when people envision aquatic apex predators, but there’s one species above them in the ocean food chain that hunts the massive sharks for their nutrient-rich livers.

Orcas, aptly nicknamed killer whales, have been known to attack mature great whites, but newly released videos from researchers in Mexico show orcas repeatedly hunting juvenile sharks in the Gulf of California.

In an article discussing the videos published in marine biology journal Frontiers in Marine Science on Sunday, researchers said orcas showed the ability to efficiently attack the young great whites in their signature hunting pods.

“Aerial videos indicate consistency in killer whales’ repeated assaults and strikes on the sharks, indicating efficient ability by the mammals in attempting to induce tonic immobility in the prey and allow uninterrupted access to the liver for consumption,” the researchers wrote.

“Once extirpated from the prey body, the target organ is shared between the members of the pods including calves.”

The two videos, one taken in 2020 and the other in 2022, show orca pods attacking great whites under water, flipping them onto their backs to stun them, then removing their livers to share amongst the group, discarding the shark’s remains.

Erick Higuera-Rivas, a marine biologist who captured the footage, told NBC News that he initially couldn’t believe the orcas had attacked a great white shark nursery, and noted that both of the documented hunts appear to have been carried out by the same group of liver-hungry killer whales.