Re: I'm surprised you replied like this. I thought the

My sigpic is designated to be scary. The word Predator is supposed to be scary and that's why it's used to refer to child love, to mean it is scary.

The killer whale has to kill for practice. Since it relies on its intelligence more than fixed instincts it needs to try methods and learn how they work and when they work best. It is no different how a hunting dependent human would learn how to hunt, either. Children are trained through practice killings (which a spear, a bow, or a shotgun, depending on the stage of technology in the place) that are by themselves impractical.

The elephant seal reproduces exclusively by rape. The size differential between adult males and all females makes it that the male gets exactly the sex they want, with any female on their beach, at any time they are horny. So the male has no special care with any female, and really has no reason to, as the sex ratio among elephant seals is also overwhelmingly polygynic so dead females are always replaceable. The consequence of the normalization of rape is, of course, the devaluation of female lives. Nothing about the predator status or not though (unless you reuse the media metaphor that I was aiming at the whole time), because elephant seals do not prey on each other for food.

And of course, any animal, whichever its feeding, kills in self-defense, but I was obviously not speaking about that either.