Killer whale

Draft Plan:

• Introduction
• Orcas:
  • Presentation of the animal: what is an orca ?
  • Physical Charecteristics
  • Habitation and Distribution
  • Adaptation to this habitation
  • Feeding,Hunting
  • Reproduction
  • Spatial and behavior structure
  • The population growth
• Pollution:
  • Definition
• Observation of the animal
  • The diefferant technics to observe the animal

Orcas, Orcinus orca

In common life we give the names of animal according to our own language. However we use a system call binomial nomenclatur to have no mal entendu between scientific coming from different languange. This is why we use a a scientific language to give names to animals. The binomial nomenclatur uses 3 laws. First we say the type and the specie of the animal in latin. When we write the scientific name of the animal the first letter of the type is written in upercase letter and the hall name is written in italic. The scientific name of the killer whale is Orcinus orca . Each animal is clasified in a specify way according to there characteristics. We use for this a system call hierarchic classification.
Order: Cetacea Family: Delphinidea Genus, species: Orcinus orca

Spatial and behavior structure

During expedition we can observe that dolphins member and so Orcas are structured as a herd. In fact these animals stay in group together and stay closer to each other than to an animal from an other group. We can observe one or two leaders in the herd and the presence of a constant central group. These leaders are stronger and larger than the others. These dominant member observed the area for potential danger or investigates if there is something new happening near the group.We sometimes have also two or three members of the group that are more in front of the others to watch for inshore areas or danger. When there is a danger the animals immediately regroups there self in a packed group with the youngest in the middle protected by the other members. There movement are synchronize and in harmony. The group structure of orcas allows them a good use of the space around them as for hunting in several different conditions.

+ Herd = family !

References

Dolphin Societies, discoveries and puzzles, edited by Karen Pryor and Kenneth S.Norris
The Ecology of whales and dolphins, edited by D.E.Gaskin

maybe you should start putting all the references somewhere on the wiki...--Pierre.brawand 2 février 2009 à 22:59 (MET)