WOLVES OF THE SEA.

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 95, 21 April 1917, Page 14

WOLVES OF THE SEA.

The killer whale usually travels and hunts in "schools" or packs of from throo to a dozen or more individuals. Unlike most whales, the members of these schools do not travel in a straggling party, but swim sido by. side, their movements »s regularly timed as thoso of sailors. ■ A regularly spaced row of advancing, long, black fins swiftly cutting the 'undulating surface of tho sea, produces a singularly sinister effect. The evil impression is well 'justified, since killers are the most savige and remorseless of whales. Tho jaws are armed : with rows of-effective teeth, with which the animals attack and devour seals, porpoises, and even destroy some of the larger whales.

Killers are like giant wolves of tho sea, and their ferocity strikes terror to other warm-blooded inhabitants of the deep. The Eskimos of the Alaskan coast of Behring Sea consider killers as actual wolvos in sea form. They believe that in the early days, when the world was young and men and animals could change their form- at will, land wolves often went to tho edge of the shore ice and. changed to killer whales, and the killer's returned to tho edge of tho ice and came out aa wolves, to go ravening over tho land. Some of the natives assure us that even to-day certain wolvos and killers uro still endowed with this power, arid on account of their malignant character, »re much feared by hunters.

Killers are known to swallow small seals and porpoises entire, and eWack large whales by tearing away their fleshy lips and tongues. When attacking largo proy, they work in packs, with all the unity and fierceness cf so niany wolvos. — National Geographic Magazine.