Possible new species of Killer Whales

Everyone knows about Killer Whales. They perform for us in Sea World and fascinate us on whale watching boats. But the Orca taxonomy is going through an upheveal with the proposition of being broken into four seperate species.

    Species are defined loosely as a group of individuals that share common morphological charateristics and can produce fertile offspring. This article proposes dividing orcas into at least three different species that include:

• Type A or the "typical" orca that feeds in open ocean on larger ceteceans.


• Type B of "pack ice killer whales" that live in the artic and feed mostly on seals.


• and Type C a smaller antartic species that dines mostly on fish.

   Each of these species are cut off geographically from each other and breed only among themselves. They have small differences in eye spot sizes and coloring. Further genetic sampling is needed to confirm lineages among these pods and determine their true status.

   As Morin, one of the scientist working on the project, said about the importance of classifying orcas correctly, "If you think of them as one global species, they're not threatened, but if you look at them as many different species, the multiple, smaller populations of killer whales that result could be seen as endangered."