The Legendary Pact Between Orcas and Humans Just Got More Mysterious

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Welcome back friends. I've wanted to make this video for a while now, but I'm glad I waited because I recently came across a paper that changed everything I thought I knew about Old Tom, a legendary orca who hunted alongside whalers in the port of Eden, Australia.

[00:00:15]Old Tom is said to have been the leader of a pod of 30 orcas named the Killers of Eden, who would herd baleen whales into the bay where the whalers were waiting. The whalers would repay the orcas by letting them have the lips and tongue of the whales. The orcas would leave the blubber and bones for the whalers. This deal between the humans and the orcas was called the law of the tongue.

[00:00:40]A little morbid, but killer whales are surprisingly picky eaters. Every population and ecotype typically specializes in a very specific type of prey. There are orcas that exclusively eat fish and not marine mammals.

[00:00:52]The orcas that eat mammals like seals and whales typically don't eat fish at all. Then there are orcas like Port and Starboard, who exclusively eat shark livers, shark and ray livers. These shark-eating orcas are known as the flat-toothed ecotype, and I published a video about them just a few weeks ago.

[00:01:12]And while researching that video, I was surprised to find Old Tom's name mentioned in this 2014 paper on shark-eating orcas found in South Africa. And he wasn't just mentioned, he was featured. There is an entire section devoted to him. But Old Tom was a mammal-eating orca who lived in Australia. He famously ate whale tongues. What the heck is he doing in a paper on the orcas of South Africa who exclusively eat shark livers?

[00:01:37]The more I looked into this story, the more oddities jumped out at me.

[00:01:40]>> [music] >> I think the true story of Old Tom and the law of the tongue might be more interesting than the legend.

[00:01:47]I'm KP, a marine biologist who specializes in marine mammals, and before we dive in, I want to take a second to recognize the cultural significance of Old Tom to the locals of Eden, Australia, and more specifically to the first Australians, who whose relationship with orcas goes back around 10,000 years. The sea coast peoples referred to the orcas as their brothers and saw them as reincarnated ancestors.

[00:02:10]Specifically, reincarnated indigenous whalers. It was believed that whenever an indigenous whaler died, an orca would be born harboring their soul. In the 1850s, many of the sea coast peoples began working for commercial whalers, specifically a family of Scottish immigrants, the Davidsons. Three generations of Davidson families operated a whaling station from 1860 [music] to 1940. And this is one of the oddities that jumped out at me. All three generations of the Davidson family claimed to have Old Tom assisting them in their whaling [music] trips.

[00:02:44]Keep that in mind.

[00:02:45]Old Tom had a few distinctive and somewhat unusual traits. For a sexually mature male orca, he was actually quite small, especially for one of the mammal-eating ecotypes. Mammal-eating orcas are some of the largest in the world with males reaching 9 m or 30 ft.

[00:03:02]Old Tom was reportedly just 6 m or 20 ft in length, but he had an extremely tall dorsal fin >> [music] >> that was bent to the right near the top.

[00:03:12]Legend has it that Old Tom would alert the Davidsons to the presence of baleen whales in the bay by breaching or slapping his tail near the Davidson family cottages. This behavior is what gave them the impression that Old Tom was the pod leader.

[00:03:25]Because he was the one apparently signaling to the humans that it was time to hunt. This isn't really an oddity, more of an observation, but Old Tom was probably not the leader of the pod.

[00:03:34]Orcas have a matriarchal social structure, so the leader of this pod was likely Tom's mother or grandmother.

[00:03:44]Are you hunting?

[00:03:46]She's hunting toes. No, you can't have my toes. You can't have them.

[00:03:50]The partnership between the Davidsons and the first Australians came to an abrupt end in 1901 when an orca from Old Tom's pod stranded and three white [music] men killed it with stakes.

[00:04:05]This deeply offended the first Australians who believed the orcas were their ancestors, so they quit working for the Davidsons.

[00:04:12]Without the indigenous knowledge and labor provided, the Davidsons business began to struggle.

[00:04:17]The next year only seven of the 30 orcas from Old Tom's pod returned to Eden.

[00:04:22]Some believe this was because the orcas knew someone killed their pod member.

[00:04:26]Others argue that it was because the Davidsons struggled without the skills and knowledge [music] of the first Australians. And others believe it was because Norwegian whalers had taken the other pod members. In the 1920s, Old Tom was the only orca who would return to Eden. The story goes that sometime in the mid-1920s, a third generation Davidson was out whaling with some of his neighbors and Old Tom helped them hunt a small baleen whale. But a storm was blowing in forcing the whalers to tow the carcass back to shore without letting Old Tom have the tongue, essentially breaking the unwritten law.

[00:04:59]Old Tom tried to stop them by grabbing onto the rope and lost some teeth in the struggle.

[00:05:05]This horrified the whalers who reportedly exclaimed, "Oh God, what have I done?"

[00:05:10]A few years later in 1930, an orca identified as Old Tom washed ashore. The orca had several abscesses in his mouth and it's believed to have died from starvation.

[00:05:20]Out of guilt, the whalers donated the skeleton to what became the Eden Killer Whale Museum where it has remained on display to this day. In 2023, researchers were able to extract and sequence DNA from the skeleton to try and determine how Old Tom related to other global populations.

[00:05:37]The study failed to find any clear descendants among the modern orca populations of Australia, apparently suggesting that Old Tom's pod went extinct.

[00:05:47]The closest genetic match was surprisingly found in the killer whales of New Zealand. This is another one of the oddities and an important one, and I'm going to circle back to it in a moment. But first, I want to go back to how Old Tom was known to three generations of Davidsons from 1860 to 1930 and to the first Australians for years before that. This means Old Tom was estimated to be at least 90 to 100 years old when he died. 90 is ancient for an orca and essentially unheard of in a male [music] orca. In the wild, orcas generally live 30 to 50 years on average, but these numbers are a bit skewed because female orcas dramatically outlive males. According to the NOAA, females typically live about 50 years in the wild, but can live up to 90 years potentially. The average lifespan for a male killer whale in the wild is just 30 years. Male orcas rarely live beyond 50.

[00:06:41]I think the oldest recorded wild male orca is around 60 or 61. It was only recently that we developed the methods to determine the age of wild orcas.

[00:06:50]One way we can do this is through their teeth. Dolphin teeth continue to grow throughout their lives, similar to the rings of a tree.

[00:06:58]Scientists can count these growth rings to determine their age. Based on teeth from the skeleton, it was determined the orca was just 35 when it died. But this is hotly contested. But let's turn back to the 2014 paper on the flat-tooth ecotype who eat sharks and rays. In their section on Old Tom, they note that although identified at the time of death by local people previously familiar with the individual, photographs of its dorsal fin at death do not agree with descriptions or photographs of Old Tom's dorsal fin. Old Tom's dorsal fin was one of his defining characteristics. It was incredibly tall and bent slightly to the right at the top. Here is a photograph of Old Tom and you can clearly see the bend to the right. And here is a photograph of the orca on the beach in 1930. It is significantly smaller. There is no rightward bend.

[00:07:48]The 2014 paper notes another oddity. The skeleton as displayed measures 6.78 m, which is roughly the reported length of Old Tom, but it includes several fabricated discs that were inserted between the vertebrae when it was mounted, possibly to make it up to the reported body length of 22 ft or 6.7 m.

[00:08:10]In total, these discs might amount to as much as 1.34 m.

[00:08:15]So, this orca was likely 3 to 5 ft shorter than Old Tom's reported size.

[00:08:20]The paper is suggesting that the orca that washed up on shore in 1930 was not Old Tom. What's more interesting is that the paper suggests this mystery orca was actually one of the flat-toothed ecotypes that prey on shark livers, shark and ray livers, and there are some compelling lines of evidence.

[00:08:37]I mentioned the DNA test that found the skeleton was most closely related to New Zealand orcas.

[00:08:43]New Zealand orcas likely belong to the flat-toothed ecotype. They prey on stingrays targeting the liver.

[00:08:49]Flat-toothed orcas get their name from the excessive wear on their teeth from the sandpaper-like skin of sharks and rays.

[00:08:58]They regularly get abscesses from this damage.

[00:09:01]The mystery orca reportedly had severe abscesses and the skeleton has worn teeth.

[00:09:08]The flat-toothed ecotype is also one of the smaller types of orcas, but at the same time, they have oversized dorsal fins and pectoral flippers.

[00:09:17]Even though the dorsal fin in the photo is nowhere near as tall as Old Tom's, it's still quite tall for its size. The small adult size, large appendages, and advanced tooth wear are characteristics indicative of a flat-toothed ecotype.

[00:09:30]And we also know there are at least three orcas in Australian waters who currently prey on sharks, Bent Left, Jagged Fin, and Ripple. So, it is possible there is a population of flat-toothed orcas in Australian waters. While I personally feel the data is convincing, it's not conclusive. Some of the specimens' teeth are worn down, but there are several that are in good condition. The teeth of a flat-toothed orca are typically uniform in wear. The 2014 paper concluded the information available does not allow an unequivocal assignment of the specimen to the particular morphotype. There is still the oddity of Old Tom's 90-year lifespan. He reportedly hunted alongside these whalers for much longer than the typical lifespan of a [music] male killer whale.

[00:10:14]I think this oddity can be explained by the fact that there is some confusion when it comes to photographs of Old Tom.

[00:10:21]These photographs have all been identified as Old Tom, but the dorsal fins don't match. There are a few where you can see the rightward bend that has been described, but the bend is more dramatic in some than in others. And there are photographs reported to be of Old Tom where the dorsal fin appears to be wavy or even straight rather than bent.

[00:10:40]To me, these all appear to be different animals.

[00:10:43]So, it's my personal opinion that Old Tom was likely multiple orcas that were mistaken for each other at different points in time. Perhaps even one that was a flat-toothed ecotype. That could explain the 90-year lifespan. I want to stress that these are my opinions, they're not meant to diminish the cultural significance of Old Tom. And while I think they are what is most likely, they are definitely not conclusive. And I want to know what you think. As always, I've linked my sources in the descriptions. Drop a comment and let me know your thoughts. And if you want to learn more about the flat-toothed ecotype, you can check out my video right here.