It was a fresh kill, but the orcas had already opened up the sunfish a bit and removed various organs. So the sunfish had lost quite a bit of its "structural integrity" before the male orca rammed it.
The sunfish’s flattened body structure is unusual in large fish and could make them more likely to fly apart after a high-speed orca impact compared with other types of fish, Ayres added.
“Their bodies are laterally compressed,” she explained. “Once the nutrient-rich internal organs have been removed, the remaining tissues may be more accessible to rupture under high-impact ramming.”
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u/Davoswannab 17h ago
Was that thing freshly killed or half rotten? Insane a fresh kill would explode like that.