Orcas are bringing humans gifts (newscientist.com)

Maybe it’s the same ones, and they desire peace

This orca prefers to gift us what appears to be a ships wheel. It’s unclear the cultural significance of this offering.

The orcas "attacking" boats are just teenagers having found a new fun thing to play with. Too bad it involves damaging private property, but I don't think it matters much to them.

Pacific cultures have long oral histories referencing altruistic and cooperative behavior from Orcas.

There have been exactly 0 known deadly attacks from wild orcas in history.

There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.

This is not correct in the least.

As one of many, many examples, a galapagos turtle reaches sexual maturity at 20 to 25 years of age, and lives 100 to 200 years.

Perhaps, what you mean, are the only other social mammals with K-population selection reproductive strategy?

FWIW, elephants also fall into this category. It’s theorized that “grandparents” are important cultural archives.

Both orcas and elephants are also matriarchal.

Perhaps you mean among mammalian species? Reptiles can live long lives and experience multiple reproductive cycles. Alligators technically live forever.

Just like humans vs birds. Some birds will see our good side (humans helped some birds with broken wings, fed some other birds), some will see our bad side (humans shooting birds).

Leopard seals, the apex predator of the Sourthern Ocean near Antarctica, have been known to bring penguins as gifts to divers. When the divers didn't take the chicken dinner, they helpfully killed it, so the diver could eat.

Disappointingly to them, no doubt, the divers still didn't dig in. But it's the thought that counts. Literally, since leopard seals can easily kill humans in the sea and on the land.

Anyway, mammals are capable of thoughtful behaviors towards others outside their own species.

Dogs will too.

I think they do have either instinctual or cultural knowledge that the soft slow things from above will bring death if they are offended.

I thought they attacked dolphins?

Here's an interesting result of that: whales that have developed “internal antlers” (https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article-abstract/113/2/5...). Mostly invisible to eyes but perfectly visible to ears.

Abstract:

Skulls of many living and extinct beaked whales (Ziphiidae) contain various bizarre bone and tooth structures. Many of them show sexual dimorphism in their skull anatomy: males have bizarre skull structures, whereas females do not. Opinions differ as to what the function of these structures might be. Some believe that these are weapons; others, that they are sound transmitters. This article argues that these structures are the means of visual display. Many of the bizarre bone structures of beaked whales are not exposed like ‘visuals’ of terrestrial tetrapods, but are located deep in soft tissues. Nevertheless, toothed whales recognize objects (including three-dimensional bodies), using echolocation. So, along with visual means, they can ‘see’ and ‘show’ their internal bone structures with echoic imaging and use them as informational sources in social interactions and in individual or species recognition.

> human lungs look much like dolphin lungs - and orcas' presumably.

More so than the lungs of other animals? Or is it just that "lungs" stand out as an unusual feature in that environment?

They can probably distinguish between similarly sized but distinct species. A dolphin and human have plenty of other distinguishing features as swimming creatures.