Oldest orca

This story makes a mockery of SeaWorld's claims that the average orca lives to an age of 25-35, as it is well established that orcas in the wild often live at least twice as long in comparison to those in captivity.
 
I would'nt sign that-Lolita at Miami Seaqurium is now 47 Years old and lives there since 43 years and Corky 2 at Seaworld lives since 1969 in Human Care.
 
There is nothing in this article that supports the claim of the researchers that she was really born in 1911. That is a very vague guess at the very best and most likely seriously over-estimated. Even if they have pictures of this animal from the 1930`th/ 1940'th (are these pictures really good enough in quality to be 100% sure that it is the same orca??) - since no one knows how a 100-year-old orca looks and how much they grow, this is no base to estimate a birth year, and certainly not with usch accuracy!!

People should accept that we do not know yet how long orcas and most other whales do live under natural conditions.
 
@Yassa, indeed … I would tread carefully here … until more concrete data on orca population dynamics, sex ratios and built are known. I find the scientific evidence for these claims of a 1910's orca rather vague at the best of times (a somewhat nice understatement for something resembling complete rubbish …:roll eyes:).
 
The resident orcas in the Vancouver Island area are actually the best studied orcas in the world, so a ton of data about population dynamics, birth and death rates and social behavoir exist.

But the study started in the 1970'th, not earlier - which makes the birth dates of all animals born before 1970 guess work. Probably a good guess for those who were calves or juveniles when first observed, but a very rough guess (or complete rubbish..) for those that were already adult. We will have to wait until those very well known orcas that were born around or after 1970 start to die from old age to know how long they can live.
 
Perhaps, I should have stated more clearly the very fact we do not have long term research to demonstrate before the 1970's. The latter timeframe more or less corresponds to when orcas were first introduced to the general public by public / performing aquaria / walaria.

So, we have date for close on 45 years and not any further. If that claim of born in 1911 would have been anything near accurate, the orca would be 103 now .. It somewhat brings me back to rumors on exagerated elephant longevity in S.E. Asian zoos (where natural life expectancy is physically near impossible beyond 55-65 years of age).

As it stands we simply do not know … where we stand with wild born whales and dolphins on this.
 
Yassa said:
There is nothing in this article that supports the claim of the researchers that she was really born in 1911. That is a very vague guess at the very best and most likely seriously over-estimated.
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all I could find was (as far as I understood) she has surviving grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that appears to be where the extrapolation of age comes from. She is undeniably old if that is the case but otherwise, yes, a bit of a guess really. What I want to know is how they arrived at the specific birth-year of 1911?! If you're extrapolating from fairly vague data such as this you don't say she was born in the exact year of 1911, you say she was born around 1910, or around 1915, or somewhere between 1910 and 1920, something along those lines. Today's science, meh!
 
We don't know how old Granny really is. Given that we have no solid record of exactly when any pre 1970 Southern Resident was born it seems kind of presumptuous to give her age at any exact year. The Dodo article is misleading because it implies that all wild killer whales will live to be 100+, when in fact there is probably a very good chance that she is an outlier or not as old as we think she is.

I get ticked off when people talk about knowing the average life expectancy of Killer Whales wildand captive because we have not observed them long enough to really know. Besides, averages can be misleading, because outliers like Granny can skew them so much. What are the median and mode ages/life expectancies? Also, this is only one population. How do we know that lie expectancies don't vary from population to population?

I'm with everyone who thinks we haven't observed them in their natural habitat long enough to make these kinds of inferences. Maybe when three or four generations have gone by we'll know. But not now, no.
 
Quite. Even if this animal is a centenarian, in itself that doesn't invalidate a suggested average lifespan of 25-30. Hunting for a living is hard, dangerous work, even if for such intelligent, well adapted animals as Orcas.
 
Why is it so hard for anyone to believe Granny could be 100+ years old? Yes, while very little is known about the Southern Resident whales prior to the 1970s, ?Granny was already and adult female with at least one adult calf, J1/Ruffles, who was believed to be close to 60 when he died. There are several adult whales in the Southern Resident community who were born in the early to mid-70s that are still alive now, which would make them 40-ish, depending on the year they were born. That age puts them above the 25-35 age range Sea World claims for life expectancy. I think Sea World wants us to believe that the only reason Corky 2 and Tokitae are still alive at almost 50 is because of the "excellent health management" they receive in captivity, but it's entirely possible they would still be alive if they hadn't been captured since they have relatives in the wild who are still alive and were born before them.

Nobody knows how long orcas live in captivity since the two oldest are still alive and happen to be wild-born, but to say they live longer than whales in the wild is ridiculous. Granny's actual age or estimated age of 103 aside, She and other wild-living whales are either the same age or older.
 
Ok when was J1/Ruffles for the first seen and when did he die? And how was estimated he was close to 60 when he died? How was as wel established the he is a calf of Granny?

This are all kinds of questions that are not clear from the articles. And there is noone indicating here that Granny cannot be over 100 years old just that the way this aged is established is questionable. Extrapolation is trickie and will never give you an exact year als claimed in the articles also the supporting information is not given.

Finally there is noone here claiming SeaWorld is right with their claims. Their claims are quite shaky at best and like the age estimate of Granny we are dealing with a lack of information espacially as our information is based on such a small sample and on a too narrow time-frame.
 
DDcorvus said:
Ok when was J1/Ruffles for the first seen and when did he die? And how was estimated he was close to 60 when he died? How was as wel established the he is a calf of Granny?

This are all kinds of questions that are not clear from the articles. And there is noone indicating here that Granny cannot be over 100 years old just that the way this aged is established is questionable. Extrapolation is trickie and will never give you an exact year als claimed in the articles also the supporting information is not given.

Finally there is noone here claiming SeaWorld is right with their claims. Their claims are quite shaky at best and like the age estimate of Granny we are dealing with a lack of information espacially as our information is based on such a small sample and on a too narrow time-frame.
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Very well put, DDc. Thanks for putting the case for scepticism so well.;)
 
This explains it well how they estimated J1's and J2's age. Everyone working with wild killer whales knows about this discrepancy and researchers that work with Northern Residents regularily estimate the age of orcas that were born before the study began again.

[...]One interesting thing Ken explained was how they arrived at 1911 as the estimated birth year for Granny, something I had always wondered about but a story I had never heard. I guess they had photos of both J1 Ruffles and J2 Granny in 1971 and both were already full grown adults. Since orcas reach full size around the age of 20, they made the estimated birth year for J1 Ruffles as 1951 (1971 - 20 years). Due to the way Granny and Ruffles associated with one another, they suspected that she might be Ruffles' mother. Since Granny was never seen with a new calf since the study began, they assumed she was post-reproductive, and that perhaps Ruffles was her last calf. Females generally stop reproducing around the age of 40, so if she had Ruffles when she was 40, her birth year would be about 1911 (1951 - 40 years).
Clearly, there are a lot of assumptions in place here. Ruffles could be even older than we suspected if he had already been an adult male for a while by 1971. Granny may not be his mother; for example, we have seen J8 Spieden become the apparent adopted mother of L87 Onyx. If the studies began now they would be suspected to be related, though from observation we know Onyx was born to L32 Olympia. As a result, Granny could be much younger - or even much older - than estimated. I've heard them say to assume it's plus or minus 10 years from 1911, but the gap could be even greater, just adding to the mystery of this iconic whale.
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Source: Orca Watcher: J2 Granny ~ Celebrating 100 Years

Problem in estimating age of the SRs is that many females start to calve late, don't calve at all or stop calving early due to the environmental stress they're exposed to. So you may get skewed numbers, e.g. J2 could have been J1's sister and just never had a calf. This assumptions would make her younger.
 
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