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Nov. 3, 2025, 12:00 AM ESTBy Evan BushSome orcas have a taste for liver — specifically, the livers of great white sharks. Videos taken by scientists in Mexico reveal how the crafty whales manage to snag bites of the apex predators’ fatty organs. Researchers filmed two orca hunts in the Gulf of California — one in 2020 and another in 2022. They show the pods attacking young great white sharks by flipping them on their backsides to stun them, then slicing their sides open to extract their livers. The team published the findings of their video studies in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science on Monday. In one of the videos, all members of the pod share the pink liver fat while the rest of the shark’s body sinks into the ocean’s depths. During the hunt, a sea lion lurks, seemingly trying to sneak away with a free meal. But the orcas blow bubbles, apparently to deter the pest. Erick Higuera-Rivas, a marine biologist and documentarian who filmed the hunts from a boat nearby, said he didn’t immediately recognize the significance of the footage until he went to edit it.“I saw in the monitor that the shark had the liver hanging out on the side, already popped off. And a few minutes later, they came up with the liver in their mouth,” said Higuera Rivas, who coauthored the study. “I was surprised that it could be a great white. I was not believing it.”Heather Bowlby, a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada who was not involved in the research, said the footage offered a compelling reminder that even top predators must watch their backs. “We’re so conditioned to thinking of white sharks as the top of the food chain,” she said. “It is always amazing to be reminded they are prey.” Higuera-Rivas and his fellow researchers said the hunts appear to be the work of the same group of orcas, which they’ve named the “Moctezuma pod.” The pod frequents the waters off of Baja California and only hunt elasmobranchs — sharks and whales. Higuera-Rivas has been following the pod for more than a decade and filming their behavior, and he’s observed how the whiles adapt their behavior to whatever species the group is targeting. The only prior evidence that orcas hunt great white sharks comes from South Africa, where they have been preying on the sharks for years and extracting their livers, leaving shark carcasses to wash up on the beach. Alison Towner, a marine biologist at Rhodes University who has studied the phenomenon in South Africa, said the behavior in Mexico is similar but not identical. The orcas in Mexico have been preying upon young sharks, whereas those in South Africa have primarily targeted adults. The orca groups likely learned the behavior independently, Towner said. “Seeing this behaviour in Mexico suggests that specific orca groups have developed their own strategies for hunting sharks,” she said via email. “The same organ is targeted, but the handling technique differs slightly from what we’ve documented in South Africa, which points to group-specific learning.” The new study shows that the orcas in Mexico have identified a weakness that makes great white sharks vulnerable. “When it flips the shark upside down, it forces the shark to get into the state that is called tonic immobility,” said Francesca Pancaldi, a coauthor of the study and a shark researcher at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas. “They freeze. It’s like a catatonic state. They just don’t do anything.” The liver is a fatty and nutritious organ that takes up about one-fourth of a sharks’ body, she added, which provides “a lot of energy.”Researchers in both South Africa and Mexico agreed that the behavior is not likely new for orcas. Rather, it’s new to scientists, who can now witness and document these hunts more easily because of improvements in drone technology. “I think it’s been going on for centuries. It’s just that it’s not easy to observe something like this,” Pancaldi said.It’s possible, though, that changes to the climate have increased the interaction between great white sharks and the Moctezuma pod, she added. “We actually are seeing more presence of great white sharks in the Gulf of California in the last 10 years,” Pancaldi said, adding that the species is responsive to changes in ocean temperatures during climate patterns like El Niño. In South Africa, scientists took notice of orca attacks on great white sharks about a decade ago, Towner said. The attacks sent the sharks fleeing from the normal spots where they feed, rest and reproduce, called aggregation grounds. “IRepeated predation has caused white sharks to abandon former core aggregation sites entirely,” Towner said. “Many sharks have likely moved offshore or into less monitored regions, which reshapes the coastal ecosystem.” After the sharks left their hangouts, populations of cape fur seal and sevengill sharks climbed. That subsequently caused a crash in those species’ main prey — like small fish and small sharks — according to research published in Frontiers in Marine Science earlier this year.Towner said just two adult male orcas, named Port and Starboard, have been behind repeated attacks on the white sharks in South Africa. The attacks have put pressure on great white sharks, which are slow to grow and reproduce, and it’s possible that could happen in Mexico, too, if the behavior becomes more frequent, she said. Evan BushEvan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News.

October 18, 2025

Oct. 18, 2025, 7:00 AM EDTBy Mustafa FattahAfter a rough, record-setting flu season, doctors and health officials are bracing for another wave of fever, misery and respiratory distress. In the U.K., health officials are warning about an early rise in flu levels among children and young adults. In Japan, health officials recently declared a flu epidemic and closed schools after experiencing an unusually high number of flu cases early in the season. What does that mean for the U.S.? Typically, flu cases start to rise in November, along with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and enteroviruses, and peak in February. But job-cut chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the government shutdown could make it hard to know how the virus is playing out this fall, experts worry. The CDC’s last influenza report for the U.S. was for the week ending Sept. 20, when there was minimal activity. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, is concerned about the possibility of limited flu surveillance by the CDC, leaving the U.S. blind to the scale and scope of flu outbreaks.“Everything from outreach campaigns to more logistical efforts to actually get vaccines out” could be affected, Rasmussen said. “That information just may not be available, so it will be very difficult to coordinate a national response,” she said.Last year’s flu was harsh. There were about 1.1 million hospitalizations associated with the flu, the highest rate in 14 years, according to the CDC. And there were the highest number of doctor visits for flu-like illnesses in more than a decade. An estimated 38,000 to 99,000 deaths were associated with the 2024-2025 flu season, according to a preliminary assessment by the CDC. For kids, it was one of the deadliest years on record: 280 children died from flu. At least three of those children died this June and July, far outside of the typical flu season.How bad will the flu be? Flu is notoriously hard to predict, and this year, things are already looking a little different. The CDC predicted at the end of August that this flu season will be more moderate than last year’s. However, there’s the possibility that some age groups could be hit hard, especially if people don’t get their flu shots. The main strains of flu currently circulating are similar to those that caused the severe outbreaks last season: H1N1 and H3N2 for flu A, as well as flu B. “It’s a little early to know which strains will predominate this year for flu season, but certainly there is risk that similar very virulent strains could circulate again this year,” said Dr. George Diaz, a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and chief of medicine at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. “This prediction for a moderate season could be off, and it could be another severe flu season,” he said.“We’re still very early in the flu season in North America, and it’s a little hard to know with certainty,” he added. Even if someone got the flu last year, they’ll still be vulnerable to the new version because immunity wanes over time, especially in older people and the immunocompromised, experts say. When is the best time to get the flu shot? The strain is only one factor in how bad it could be this year. Vaccine hesitancy and a weakened public health infrastructure in the U.S. could contribute to flu spread. “It’s going to be largely driven more by social and policy changes than it is going to be driven by virologically related ones,” Rasmussen said.Last flu season, less than half of kids were vaccinated against the flu, a decline of over 20 percentage points from the 2019-2020 season. This year, that trend is expected to continue, said Rasmussen.Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said that it’s difficult to know how severe it will be this year in the U.S, but that it’s very unusual to have “two ultra-severe seasons back to back.” So, even though the virus hasn’t changed much, getting vaccinated is the best way to protect against the worst of the season.“October is the ideal time to get vaccinated,” he said. “That ought to provide quite reasonable protection throughout what we consider the influenza season, through February and into March.”Mustafa FattahMustafa Fattah is a medical fellow with the NBC News Health and Medical Unit.

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