This is a Post About Male Killer Whales and Culture

teleidoplex showed me this call for submissions for dark fairy tales about princesses and said it sounded like something up my alley, as did everyone else who saw it. The submission date is January 15 and while I've got short stories with princesses and short stories that're dark, the two do not overlap. So I thought, and thought, and was pretty sure I'd end up with some sort of animal bride motif, but what? Maybe something with mermaids and marrying the Other to cement peace or something?

Good things come to those who don't go with the first idea, because I woke up the next morning and knew I had to write a killer whale animal groom story.

I've been having a fascination with male killer whales lately, ever since realizing that killer whales have a definable culture intrinsic to specific cultural groups (and families). Having an anthropology degree, I perk up when people say "culture." And take that, io9 commentors, saying cultural anthropology is worthless! (Seriously, sci-fi fans thinking cultural anthro is worthless/better covered by another field. Lord grant me patience.) It's not just that they have culture-- their cultural system turns what we're used to seeing in nature on its head.

Evolutionary psych people say that men are men and women are women because we evolved that way-- that men are big and strong and aggressive and thus WAR and women are smaller and nurturing and thus BABIES and also they like pink because they gathered and berries are pink/red. As you can guess, I think ev psych people are idiots.

Male killer whales are bigger than their female counterparts, they have that big impressive fin (obviously for display purposes! All sexual dimorphism is for display/fighting! Though a google search isn't turning up any theories on why the difference). So it stands to reason that males, like other dolphins, leave their mothers once they come of age to go woo unrelated ladies, right?

They stay with their mothers. Forever. In fact they are apparently almost totally dependent on their mothers. From the study: "Our research shows that, for a male over 30, the death of his mother means an almost 14-fold-increase in the likelihood of his death within the following year....With this close association, older mothers have the opportunity to increase the transmission of their genes by helping their adult offspring survive and reproduce. We simply don't know just how mothers are increasing the survival of their adult male offspring. Anecdotal observations suggest that mothers may help adult sons with foraging or providing support during aggressive interactions. This is one of the things we hope to work on in the future."

That's right. If you read between the lines it's clear: killer whales don't roam around and boff as many females as possible as people say the male imperative is to do because that's the most advantageous reproductive strategy. They hang out with mom and mate with the females they come into contact with--possibly with mom's approval (matchmaker mommy orcas! I want this reality tv show right now).

Even among intelligent family-oriented mammals, males tend to leave the family and join bachelor groups either of their peers like bottlenoses do (so you've got roving gangs of young, sexually frustrated dolphins) or mixed age groups like African elephants. In killer whales, daughters leave to start their own families while sons stick it out with mom. It's natural that males are more aggressive, war-like and not at all family oriented, people say! Just look at [animal exemplar]!

Nature is more complicated than that, if we could ever really understand human nature-- because admitting that people are individuals who want to do what works best for them is too hard for some folks. I digress.

My fingers itched from the moment I saw the documentary to say something about it. To do a comparison. Killer whales are possibly more like us than any other species in terms of complexity, and the strongest argument for complex animal culture, which like humans, can even dictate their choice of mates which conjures up the image of "you can't date that jezebel, she'll teach your babies to eat stingrays and ain't none of my grandkids gonna be stung in the face!" "Don't say that, we're in love!"

The 2-hour PBS documentary is here, and very much worth your while if you have any interest in killer whales. I wanted to be a marine biologist as a kid so I've kept up with a lot of this stuff, but even I was surprised by some of the things here.

And there are some really great videos on youtube that I watched to get a good feel for them, because oh gosh they are so pretty and nifty looking and expressive. And I say this as someone that's been close enough to touch one. There are some kayaking videos that make me want to move to British Columbia and go kayaking every day.