Off Mexico, drone footage shows a mother orca hunting a sea turtle with her calf nearby

A drone flight off Mexico's Baja California peninsula captured the striking moment where one mother orca may have taught her baby how to hunt sea turtles.

What happened?

Alonso Rodríguez, the drone operator and founder of Mares De Mexico, captured the scene during a Gulf of California trip with local fishermen while also working alongside researchers studying the area's orcas.

Near sunset, as National Geographic reported, nine orcas appeared by the boat. After a mother and her calf separated from the pod, Rodríguez sent up his drone.

The aerial footage it captured showed the mother killer whale catching a sea turtle and then handling it in a way researchers considered unusual. National Geographic shared the video of the encounter.

Instead of dispatching the turtle at once, she spent several minutes keeping it underwater, rolling and spinning it, and pulling it by a flipper as the calf remained nearby.

Rodríguez told National Geographic that "I always try to have my camera with me and to be ready, because you never know when something's going to happen out there in the ocean." 

He added that "The moment that I saw the [turtle] come into frame, I was like, Wow, something different is going to happen."

Because the mother delayed feeding, scientists are weighing whether this was the orca playing with its food or instead whether the calf was being given a chance to learn hunting behavior.

Why does it matter?

Phillipa Brakes, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, told Nat Geo that demonstrating teaching in animals is particularly challenging. 

She explained that proving that an animal is "Teaching is a much higher bar because it requires you to think about the intent and theory of mind of the other individual, without being able to interview them." 

To argue that teaching is taking place, researchers usually look for three signs. First, whether the older animal changes its behavior around a younger one. Second, whether that change helps the younger one learn faster. And third, whether the older animal pays a cost in time or energy.

Here, that cost may be the extra time the mother spent with the turtle rather than feeding immediately. Brakes added that the video aligns with the idea of teaching because the mother appeared to show how prey could be disabled while escaping.

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