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The largest recorded Orca
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Tigerluver makes a great point.
I am not sure who here is very familiar with Cichlid Fish (freshwater fish) but I am very familiar with them, aside from owning many different kinds in my life, I have researched them for years. A dovii (one of the largest predatory cichlids) is a very popular fish, the largest measurement to ever come from them are from wild caught, same with Umbee (similar fish to a dovii) The largest captive is 24'' or so, the largest caught by real is 28'' but larger ones than that have been speared etc. What I am saying is, nothing is going to provide a fish or mammal the nutrients and space of their mother nature, especially the open ocean, its always going to produce larger animals, and its also why many animals can't even be held captive because they die, Like GWS' .
Its tough to find wild orcas and something to scale them against, but I think this gives a great idea
 *This image is copyright of its original author Obviouslt, the age and sex are unknown, but its a huge whale. As big as any captive images I have ever seen, imo. 
Other data about two wild orcas from the south-west Indian ocean:
 *This image is copyright of its original author Can we compare them with captive specimens of the same length? I will say yes! 
Hello everyone
Those documents provide very useful informations on large specimens of killer whales http://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/h...9_N_06.pdf http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article...ne.0026738 see table S5 http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/CR/1984/8470.PDF see page 126 http://swfsc.noaa.gov/publications/TM/SW...SC-364.PDF see page 16 http://www.marinemammal.org/wp-content/p...dymass.pdf To my knowledge, the Bigg and Wolman equation ( https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2...059944.pdf ) is the only one to predict body mass based on TL. For example, the largest animal mentioned (32 feet=9.75m) would weigh more than 10 metric tons
Welcome aboard @tripoliraider, nice to meet you! [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]
Thank you for all these documents, be sure that we will read them all. It is interesting than that equation produce a result of 10 tons for a c.9.8 m long specimen.
Interesting that in smaller whales all the way up to Sperm whales, the Males are larger than the females, then every whale after the sperm whale, the females are larger than the males.
I wonder if producing such massive young means they need to be much larger? 
Hello Grizzly
The 32 ft orca was caught in Norvegian waters, the 31 ft specimen in Japanese waters. However Jonsgard and Lysoel caution that these lengths may have been estimated rather than exactly measured. BTW it seems that the maximum recorded weight for a wild orca is 6600 kg (see http://www.sararegistry.gc.ca/virtual_sa...0809_e.pdf )
7.65m (see page 12). Sadly, I haven't been able to access the Yamada document
Here is more data, from Heptner et al. (1996) about the size of the orca, hunting habits and stomach content, which seems crucial (like in land carnivores) to access its "real" weight.
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author Interesting data, take a good read on it. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]
Wasn't the longest recorded Orca in the waters of Japan 9.4 meters?
Where did they quote the 10 meters specimen?
Good question. Besides, there is the problem that we don't know how these orcas were measured. I infer they were in straight line, but we don't know.
I think we need to investigate the source of Nishiwaki and Hanada (1958), which seems to be the source of the data. I think that the figure of 10 meters is more an approximation than an actual figure, the real "record" from Japan, according with this source, should be the male of 9.4 m. Interestingly, Foote et al. (2009) quotes a male from Scotland with a total length of 8.45 m, while Pitman et al. (2007) quotes a maximum of 9.2 m from North Atlantic/Norway, with other similar sized animals from the Soviet Antarctic whaling data and in the Japan coastal waters. These are actually measured animals, which add reliability to the claims. At the moment, Heyning & Dahlheim (1988) only mention that males of up to 9.8 m have been reported, but for me, this sounds more like those "hearsay" reports in literature. More data incoming in next posts. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]
BTW, i always got the impression that the largest bull orca in the wild may attain 8-9 tons for an extremely freak specimen, but anything over 10 tons may sound a bit too fishy.
Anyway, the current reliable record for the longest orca may be 9.4 meters, but still there also may have the different barometer when it comes to the measurement.
The International Whaling Commission annual reports are a good source of info
https://archive.iwc.int/pages/view.php?r...&curpos=29 (download and see pages 541-545 and 551-566) |
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