Watch a pod of orcas pretending to drown one of their own in macabre training session

Footage from the BBC's new nature series "Parenthood" shows orcas practicing an important blue whale-hunting technique on each other.

Orca moms teach their young how to pretend-drown each other, first-of-its-kind footage shows. The brutal training session teaches orcas the skills needed to kill the largest animal that has ever lived.

In the video, a young orca (Orcinus orca) pretends to be prey, letting the rest of the pod surround it and submerge its blowhole to prevent it from breathing. Members of the pod practice holding the young orca's head under the water for a while before releasing it.

Later in the clip, the pod applies this technique while hunting a blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). The orcas appear to catch the whale off guard, giving them an advantage in what would otherwise be an unequal fight with the enormous whale. They crowd around the whale's head and submerge its blowhole, but it's unclear from the footage whether they succeed in killing the giant mammal.

While researchers already knew that orcas can kill whales by drowning them, "this practice-hunting behaviour has never been filmed before," a spokeswoman for the BBC, which filmed the footage for its new nature series "Parenthood," told The Times.

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