False Killer Whale
The False Killer Whale is a member of the dolphin family, Delphinidae. It is not related to the Killer Whale, but its shape resembles that species and it does occasionally feed on other cetaceans. In fact, the False Killer Whale is rarely seen and not a lot is known about its habits. Most of the information collected thus far has come from False Killer Whales that got stranded ashore. They are also represented in some zoos and their behavior has been observed in captivity.
It is known that the False Killer Whale has a bend or elbow at the halfway mark on each of his flippers, and that his dorsal fin is around twelve inches high. They are dark gray/black in coloring, around twenty feet long, and they weigh close to 3300 pounds. They have forty-four teeth. Their lifespan is thought to be around sixty years.
False Killer Whales live together in groups of anywhere from ten to fifty in number. They are fast swimmers and have been known to willingly approach boats. They are very playful and entertaining. They like tropical and temperate waters, and are known to live in the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The worldwide population of False Killer Whales is not known but the largest number is thought to be in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Numbers there are estimated to be around 40,000.
Not much is known about the migration of False Killer Whales. It is believed that they move to warmer waters in the winter to breed and cooler waters in the summer to feed. They have been seen traveling together in groups of up to three hundred. They have been hunted by humans in Indonesia and the West Indies. They are also killed in Japan. It is known that from the 1960s to 1990s around nine hundred False Killer Whales were intentionally killed by the Japanese for bothering commercial fishing lines.
False Killer Whales feed on fish and cephalopods but have been known to attack small cetaceans. Their stomach contents have been examined and have included salmon, bonito, yellowfin tuna, herring, perch, mackerel, and squid. In captivity, these small whales often live with dolphins, and they can be found in displays at several aquariums. They are the first whale species ever to mate with a dolphin and deliver an offspring that is fertile. The name given to this cross-species is a Wolphin.
The biggest rescue of False Killer Whales occurred in June, 2005 at Geographe Bay in Western Australia. One hundred-forty were stranded in four separate incidents. Fifteen hundred volunteers were organized and all but one whale were successfully returned to the ocean.