Serial Killer Whales Have Been Murdering Great White Sharks & Eating Their Livers @TheCosmosNews

#thecosmosnews A Pair of Killer Whales Is Terrorizing Great White Sharks Off South Africa s Coast.The orcas are attacking sharks and ripping out their livers -- forcing the predators to flee regions they once dominated. A pair of killer whales who have developed a taste for the livers of great white sharks appear to have transformed an ocean ecosystem in South Africa, scientists said yesterday. Serial killer whales have been murdering sharks and eating their livers for 5 years.In the waters off of South Africa, a killer whale killing spree is raging. Since 2017, a pair of male orcas (Orcinus orca) have slaughtered at least eight great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) near the Gansbaai coast, tearing the fearsome fish apart and eating their livers in all but one case. Some of the sharks — which scientists periodically find dead and shredded on nearby beaches — were even missing their hearts. Such grisly displays aren t that unusual for orcas, which have been observed killing everything from tiny fish to burly sharks, sea lions and even blue whales. But rarely have the violent escapades of two individual whales had such a clear and immediate impact on their habitat, say the authors of a new study published Wednesday (June 29) in the African Journal of Marine Science. According to the researchers, great white shark sightings have dropped dramatically in the area since the two serial killer cetaceans began their spree five years ago. Using a combination of long-term sightings and tagging data, the researchers found that dozens of sharks have been actively avoiding regions of the Gansbaai coast when the orcas are nearby. Tagged sharks sometimes disappeared for weeks or months at a time, abandoning territory that, historically, has been dominated by great whites. "What we seem to be witnessing though is a large-scale avoidance strategy, mirroring what we see used by wild dogs in the Serengeti in Tanzania, in response to increased lion presence," lead study author Alison Towner, a senior biologist studying white sharks at the Dyer Island Conservation Trust in South Africa, said in a statement. "The more the orcas frequent these sites, the longer the great white sharks stay away."