OK, that's really interesting! How often, and which orcas?

All bears are excellent swimmers. They float due to high fat content, and their oily coat, which makes it much easier to swim.

It's feasible, but highly, unlikely.

Orcas have been observed preying on several aquatic mammal species, but never on a swimming terrestrial mammal. But, some carcasses of moose, and one deer, have been found with bite marks consistent with an orca attack.

Orca pods have different ecotypes, and often specialize on specific prey species. They only occasionally go after prey outside of their preferences.

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I mean, better than pretty much any other animal of that size in the water.

I don’t expect a mountain lion is hunting in the water, nor are they going to catch up to my kayak.

They’re gonna eat SO good if they make it to San Juan! All those lil deer and chickens everywhere are about to learn a hard lesson about the food chain.

Paywalled. Which island? Every rock near Puget Sound is inhabited these days.

However, on some days it's Pungent Sound.

And if there isn't a grunge band by that name, there should be.

they eat wolves in the PNW, so I feel like it wouldn't be much of a stretch for them to also eat a mountain lion given the opportunity

Its Puget Sound, OP.

Not Pugent.

Nope, the one in Seattle is called Puget Sound.

Kidding, cause OP didn’t copy and paste, and fucked the spelling.

Seattle or there abouts.

The tag on a black bear a coworker hunted indicated it had swam across east Grand Traverse Bay at some point, a distance of 3 - 5 miles. They are pretty fat though. I imagine it could spend a lot of time just floating and conserving its energy.

It's not so much that they can't swim, but rather that they can't float, so they have to move along the bottom by running along or leaping off the ground. But if they were made more buoyant I bet they'd be powerful swimmers.

If you think this is impressive, you should hear them scream

Where is Pugent Sound?

I'm guessing with the walruses it's the flippers that make the difference.

Just going by appearance I'd have guessed a hippo and a manatee would be more closely related, but here we are ;-)

HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 47,149,294 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 1,025 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.

Oh damn, true, I forgot that, as they're pretty aquatic, but yeah, you are right, they just run underwater, haha.

Eh, they're just the part of the branch that stayed in the shallows. (Whale evolution docs are cool)

Seems like going back from land to water has happened quite a few times. Taxonomy is interesting and your comment made me look a bit, and to my surprise, hippos are more closely related to cetaceans than they are to manatees. I mean, I had never given it any thought before, but I didn't realise how different manatees and dugongs are from cetaceans.

Also, seals and walruses. Weird that a hippo can't swim, but walruses can. They both look heavy enough, but guess hippos do be a bit denser.

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Oh great, the murder kitty can swim also!

In bed with a cougar can be a positive.

Hippos can't swim which is kind of odd given they're the most closely related land mammals to whales.

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Who said anything about killing anyone? Just don’t have kids. If people were responsible and being childfree were normalized instead of shunned, We’d be down by a few billion in a generation. Making more modern societal consumers on purpose is selfish and irresponsible.

You don’t have to kill anyone to depopulate. Just stop breeding.