Orcas Are Ramming 2,000-Pound Sunfish Until They Explode - And It Might Just Be for Fun
Marine biologists have documented a new hunting behavior in orcas where they ram dead sunfish to break them into smaller, edible pieces. This 'hold-to-ram' strategy is considered a unique display of the species' inventive predatory skills.
Why it matters
This discovery provides new insights into the complex social learning and problem-solving capabilities of killer whales in the wild.
Somewhere in the sun-bleached waters of the Gulf of California, a female orca, a.k.a killer whale, clamps her teeth around the tail of a dead sunfish. She holds steady. Several feet away, a male orca — several tons of black-and-white muscle — accelerates through the water like a torpedo. At the last possible second, she lets go.
The impact is devastating. The sunfish, a species that can grow to almost 10 feet long (more than three meters) and weigh up to 4,400 pounds (2,000 kilograms), disintegrates into thousands of floating pieces of tissue.
Then a calf swims over and starts snacking. The video below recorded exactly that.
The discovery is a newly documented hunting behavior described in a study published in Frontiers in Ethology , and marine biologists say they’ve never seen orcas do anything quite like it.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in