Orcas have been recognized to slap round stingrays, punt seals into the air and in any other case play with their meals. However killer whales don’t simply toy with dwell prey. Some additionally appear to take pleasure in destroying the carcasses of their kills like piñatas.
Scientists documented this brutal exercise amongst orcas (Orcinus orca) within the Gulf of California in 2024 and 2025. In each instances, one grownup orca held a lifeless sharp-tail sunfish (Masturus lanceolatus) regular whereas one other slammed into it with sufficient power to smash the sunfish into smithereens.
Killer whales may pulverize sunfish to interrupt them into smaller bites for younger orcas — or they could simply discover it entertaining, researchers report July 23 in Frontiers in Ethology.
“I used to be completely gobsmacked” by this conduct, says Marianne Nyegaard, a marine biologist at Auckland Museum in New Zealand who was not concerned within the work. She’d seen a pair movies of orcas battering sunfish on social media earlier than the brand new paper did a deep dive on this phenomenon. “I assumed it was the good factor I had ever seen,” she says.
Nyegaard isn’t essentially shocked that orcas have provide you with such a artistic technique to dispatch sharp-tail sunfish, which may stand up to a couple meters lengthy. “Orcas will do all types of issues,” she says. “They’re so intelligent at determining find out how to hunt and take care of a ton of various prey varieties.” That searching is commonly a crew sport, as when orcas band collectively to ambush blue whales or collectively make waves to knock penguins off ice.
Orcas almost definitely annihilate sunfish this manner to assist feed their younger, says Francesca Pancaldi, a marine biologist not concerned within the work. After one of many sunfish explosions reported within the paper, she notes, a younger orca started feeding on the small bits of carnage.
However that will not be the one motive for this follow, provides Pancaldi, of the marine science middle in La Paz related to Mexico’s Instituto Politécnico Nacional. “Killer whales are extremely social animals, and a conduct can concurrently present dietary advantages, reinforce social bonds and function a chance for youthful people to be taught searching methods.”
