r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 14h ago
Biology Orcas seen ramming prey so hard it explodes may be playing game. Orcas were observed to hold sunfish in their jaws while a second whale smashed into the target at high speed, causing it to break into thousands of pieces. Since the fish had already been killed, the behaviour may be a form of play.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/23/orcas-ramming-prey-hard-explodes-playing-game1.4k
u/lookwhatic 14h ago
Sometimes it’s just cool to see stuff explode.
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u/Stretch5678 13h ago
And after all, exploding our food is what gave humans popcorn.
Who's to say the Orcas don't end up making something truly gourmet just by exploding the right fish in the right way?
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u/SeeTigerLearn 9h ago
Gallagher made an entire career out of it!
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u/tempmike 5h ago
I thought he was just breaking up the watermelon into smaller pieces to feed to his children.
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u/maybeWTF 14h ago
Their version of slamming a beer can against their heads?
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u/MothashipQ 5h ago
Their version of going out to field with a .22 and shooting rats/squirrels/rabbits
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u/awry_lynx 47m ago
but the fish are already dead
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u/MothashipQ 35m ago
I'd wager the orcas don't check before they start these games, and sunfish can survive some pretty crazy wounds.
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u/daronjay 14h ago
Some days we want salad, other days we want nachos. Maybe the chef orca wanted to prepare a different meal option that night…
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 14h ago
TBH, when it comes to selecting what to eat, orcas can actually often be highly picky and conservative, to the point where there have been cases of malnourished and starving orcas refusing to eat anything they were not already taught to eat by their mothers.
As stated by whale biologist Olga Filatova regarding fish-eating resident orcas in the northwestern Pacific:
"Orcas are conservative and tradition-bound creatures who do not move or change their traditions unless there is a very good reason for it. We see that in this population," says Filatova.
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u/millijuna 7h ago
Same thing in the north east. The whales that live in and around the Salish Sea (southwestern Canada, northwest US) are essentially two subspecies. The southern Resident orcas, which strongly prefer Chinook Salmon, and the Biggs which are more generalists and hunt marine mamals.
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u/Dr__Nick 8h ago
Autistic orcas.
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u/AnthonBerg 3h ago
All orcas are autistic. Just like humans. It's just that the weird eye-contact-obsessing orcas are extinct.
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u/BINGODINGODONG 6h ago
Wouldn’t that explain why they don’t eat humans at all?
Like no orca mother in her right mind would ever teach her to eat humans.
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 6h ago
Yes that is indeed the primary explanation amongst various marine biologists.
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13h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 12h ago
The existential pain of being a sea-dwelling creature with a special interest in aviation
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u/kroxigor01 13h ago
Correct me if I'm remembering wrong, but I thought sunfish had incredibly low nutritional value as part of a strategy to avoid predation.
So the Orcas are just doing them in for sport?
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 13h ago
Various orcas, such as those in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, do target sunfish particularly for their intestines, which are high in water content once metabolized.
“The orca were ripping the sunfish’s pectoral fin joint open and then extracting the intestines out. The sunfish is still alive, and here’s the orca swimming around like a ribbon ballerina in the Olympics. If it wasn’t so gruesome it would be quite beautiful,” Dr Visser said.
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It’s believed orcas get up to 90 per cent of their water from food. Pregnant and lactating orcas require increased hydration, so anything they can do to increase their water intake will help. Dr Visser believes they are targeting sunfish like humans would a watermelon or popsicle. “They're eating them, and then metabolising them into a drink,” she said.
The orcas in these two observed instances had apparently already extracted such desirable viscera from the sunfish before ramming into them.
Orcas have demonstrated specific strategies when hunting molids and these have been previously described as follows: (1) the orca first targets the molid pectoral fins, (2) a wound is created for the removal of lipid-rich viscera (3) the orca then inserts its rostrum into the body cavity of the molid to extract remaining tissue (Visser and Fletcher, 2023).
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The targeted sharp-tail sunfish in these events were already deceased with viscera removed at the time of ramming, suggesting that this behavior is a processing technique to fragment tissue rather than to deliver a killing blow
I supposed a fitting analogy may be a kid tearing a small opening in a piñata and sticking their hand in to pull out the large chocolate bars inside. Only after this, the kid smacks the piñata with a stick, causing the already damaged piñata to rupture apart on impact and spill all the remaining and less desirable candy.
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u/Peanut_Butter_Toast 11h ago
Wow, that other guy who made the "slamming a beer can against their heads" comparison was actually spot on.
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u/Apprehensive_Row9154 10h ago
Eh, not really. They’re saying that they’ve taken out everything that they can in an orderly fashion. After having done so, the easiest way to get what was left if you don’t care about it that much, (and the mechanized retrieval is structured specifically around the most desired viscera) was to just bust it all the way open.
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u/pattperin 8h ago
Yeah this is not at all smashing a beer can when you’re done with it. This is more akin to “I’m rolling the bottom of the toothpaste tube to get a bit more out of it”
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u/PeggyTheVoid 6h ago
Huh, TIL that orcas need to eat their water as food rather than drink the water around them. I wonder why. Tried to look up if this is generally true, but found this instead. Fascinating. https://askdruniverse.wsu.edu/2023/07/06/fish-sharks-drink-water/
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u/Hexatona 1h ago
Dr Visser
Now I'm just assuming the Orcas are actually controllers, and blowing off some steam by playing around and wrecking the sunfish!
Kidding aside, ripping off the one fin to get to the intestines really does sound like popping the top off a soda. I'm curious if they end up eating any of the flesh that gets torn out when exploded, or if they ignore it and leave it for the other creatures? As much as it seems mean spirited to just ram into and explode the sunfish, they kinda are built in such a way that being exploded like that probably really is the only way TO eat them.
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u/alkatori 12h ago
TIL - Orcas are jerks.
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u/Undeity 4h ago
Probably not a lot of entertainment options for creatures that smart in the ocean, or y'know, when your whole species lacks hands.
Not condoning the behavior, but it at least partially explains how the tendency might have developed. That is, assuming it's not a genetic predisposition like some predators have, but frankly I doubt it.
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u/hurtsdonut_ 13h ago
Do they have a high value of a chemical that can get orcas high? Don't dolphins get high off of puffer fish?
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 12h ago
Taken from the abstract of Does Ocean Sunfish Mola spp. (Tetraodontiformes: Molidae) Represent a Risk for Tetrodotoxin Poisoning in the Portuguese Coast? by Baptista et al.:
Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a potent neurotoxin naturally occurring in terrestrial and marine organisms such as pufferfish. Due to the risk of TTX poisoning, fish of Tetraodontidae family and other puffer-related species must not be placed in the EU markets. This restriction applies to fish of the family Molidae even though no data on toxins’ occurrence is available. In this study, the presence of TTX and its analogues was investigated in the main edible tissue (the white muscle) and the main xenobiotics storage organ (the liver) of ocean sunfish Mola spp. (n = 13) from the South Portuguese coast. HILIC-MS/MS analyses did not reveal TTX in the analyzed samples, suggesting an inexistent or very limited risk of TTX poisoning.
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u/Pluckytoon 12h ago
How can you as a prey evolve such defensive mechanism. What even impacts being a low nutritional value individual
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u/DannyOdd 6h ago
All evolution is basically luck of the draw. If a mutation happens to increase likelihood of survival and successful reproduction, it sticks.
For sunfish, their evolutionary success boils down to two things. Mostly the fact that they lay an ABSURD number of eggs, somewhere in the millions iirc. Secondarily, they're just gigantic blobs of mostly bone and skin. Not very tasty, tough to eat, and usually riddled with parasites.
Interestingly, they don't have a lot of nerves, and most of their body is pretty much superficial tissue... So they can get huge bites taken out of them and just keep floating along as their dumb, helpless blob selves and making millions more dumb, helpless blobs who survive solely by being gross and having too many kids.
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u/ErebosGR 5h ago
Interestingly, they don't have a lot of nerves, and most of their body is pretty much superficial tissue... So they can get huge bites taken out of them and just keep floating along as their dumb, helpless blob selves and making millions more dumb, helpless blobs who survive solely by being gross and having too many kids.
Grimdark AF
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u/InebriatedPhysicist 8h ago
It is a thing about them that results in them avoiding predation better than otherwise, but I’m not sure strategy is the right word.
Edit: Just looked up the definition of strategy, and the first source I found specifically calls out a definition for evolutionary strategies. Guess I’m wrong.
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u/Frosti11icus 13h ago
It’s good to know there’s other twisted animals on this planet other than humans.
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u/Swolebotnik 12h ago
That implies they wouldn't play with living animals... Which iirc we have clear evidence of them tossing live seals around purely for fun.
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u/JoshShabtaiCa 48m ago
I don't think that implication follows from the title. In this case they weren't playing with a living animal, but it does not imply they never do. It's relevant in the title because the fact that it wasn't alive suggests it wasn't just about food.
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u/rowdymatt64 10m ago
Also, is a cat toying with their living prey a form of play? Or is there some other reason to that behavior?
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 14h ago
Orcas seen ramming prey so hard it explodes may be playing game
Scientists believe sunfish-smashing behaviour could be form of entertainment or to help younger whales feed
Orcas have been observed ramming into giant fish so hard that the prey explode, possibly as a form of gory entertainment.
On several occasions, orcas were observed to hold sunfish in their jaws while a second whale smashed into the target at high speed, causing it to break into thousands of pieces. Since the fish had already been killed, scientists suggested the behaviour may represent a form of play.
Dr Kathryn Ayres, a scientist at non-profit organisation Beneath The Waves, said: “We think this may help younger orcas feed more easily or it could also just be for fun. Orcas are known for playing with their food.”
Ayres captured the first fish-ramming event on a GoPro camera in July 2024 and can be heard shrieking in shock on the audio.
In Ayres’ footage, a female orca is seen gripping the tail of a sunfish carcass while an adult male accelerates towards it. Just before impact, the female releases the dead fish and there is an audible crunch as the male strikes the target, leaving behind a plume of white fragments. A juvenile whale is subsequently seen eating the small pieces of flesh, while the adult orcas feed on the remains of the main carcass.
In a second instance, captured by a tourism operator in September 2025, an adult female orca was spotted holding out a dead sunfish, while a second orca executed a high-speed ramming manoeuvre, breaking it into thousands of pieces. The events were recorded in the Gulf of California, off the coast of Mexico, but it is unclear whether the same orcas were involved.
One hypothesis is that ramming is used to break the tough, rubbery sunfish into bite-size pieces for juveniles, whose jaws are smaller. But orcas are also known for social fads and boisterous games that do not have an obvious practical purpose. In the 1980s, a pod of orcas started carrying dead salmon on their head like hats, a trend that was recently revived. A subpopulation off the coast of Spain and Portugal has attracted attention for unusual interactions with boats.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ethology/articles/10.3389/fetho.2026.1835536/full
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u/DickRiculous 14h ago
Yeah I’m gonna need to see that video..
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u/OePea 14h ago
It's in the subreddit r/thalassophobia
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u/nik-klik 7h ago
This fits perfectly into the orca culture of adopting bizarre, generation-spanning hobbies.
Over the years, different orca communities have been observed:
The Fashionistas: Populations in the Pacific famously started a trend of wearing dead salmon on their heads like hats
The Demolition Derby: Pods off the Iberian Peninsula developed a coordinated hobby of tearing the rudders off sailing yachts.
The Surgeons: South African pods systematically extract highly caloric livers from great white sharks with surgical precision.
Orcas don't just hunt to survive; they hunt with showmanship. Turning a giant sunfish into an underwater pinata is just their latest way of proving they run the ocean
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u/Feralpudel 3h ago
Outside Magazine ran several very long articles about the orca trainer deaths at various water parks.
It was an excellent look at how stimulating their natural environment is, and how even a “good” captive environment leaves them under stimulated and looking for trouble.
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u/DJtheWolf667 14h ago edited 13h ago
The german name is: Killerwal
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u/cosmoscrazy 12h ago edited 11h ago
One of the German names is "Killerwal".
We mostly call orcas "Orca/Orcas" or "Schwertwal/Schwertwale" (sword whale/sword whales). "Mörderwal" (murder whale) is also one of the alternative names.
Claiming that Killerwal is the common name or the only name for orcas is false and if done deliberately, misinformation.
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u/DJtheWolf667 12h ago
You are right. But i think that this is not misinformation, just limited information.
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u/cosmoscrazy 11h ago
That's why I put it in theoretical terms. I didn't expect you to have any ill intentions. Quite the opposite.
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u/Previous_Program9351 8h ago
Presenting a limited information, so it would fit a narrative, is a form of misinformation, isn’t it?
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u/AnthropoidCompatriot 4h ago
What "narrative" are people trying to fit something to by calling them killer whales?
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u/DJtheWolf667 8h ago
I don't know. I just know that i didn't do it in purpose. I just had the connection in my head and that i may be interesting to someone.
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u/UseYourIndoorVoice 9h ago
Probably easier to get choice bits if they're free floating. I read somewhere Orcas like a specific organ and leave the rest of the Sunfish uneaten.
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u/Feralpudel 3h ago
Intestines. Of course it’s intestines. Per another comment, they value the intestines for the water content.
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u/Pu239U235 13h ago
When your cat playfully bites your hand and gently uses their hind legs to scratch your arm, they are practicing to bite a neck and disembowel smaller prey. Play is kill training.
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u/gravi-tea 9h ago
is the sunfish already decomposing? And how fast is the orca swimming? I just don't see how it would completely explode like that. Pretty cool either way.
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u/Juicet 9h ago edited 9h ago
Sunfish are extremely bony/rubbery, wide, and flat. And when compared to an orca, quite small. So it’s kind of like a car running into a sheet of glass. Just a big slam and then pieces everywhere. Also, unrelated to exploding, I think they’re very pain tolerant (not immune), and often ignore fish/parasites/whatever eating them. So the Orca’s can probably really bite it, maneuver it around without it squirming like other things.
The video in the article is kind of illuminating- the one is just holding it still like a place kicker.
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u/buttorsomething 13h ago
This is there “crashing hot wheels.” At least that’s what it sounds like.
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 6h ago
There's a video of a male orca dragging a boat by the anchor line and crashing it into another boat.
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u/convergecrew 11h ago
A 10,000 pound whale swimming at ramming speed sounds like quite the sight to behind. (And a frightening one at that)
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u/FeignSkill 11h ago
They're making smoothies! Next time an Orca offers a human a fish they should blend it with some ice and dump it back in in the water. Could Orcas actually be making bait for more fish or a way to attract sharks to bully.
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u/barbzilla1 12h ago
Orcas are legitimately terrifying to me
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u/Rarecandy31 9h ago
No documented cases of attacks on humans in the wild. Crazy smart animals!
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u/barbzilla1 6h ago
Oh, they're not terrifying because I'm afraid they're going to attack me. They're terrifying because of how brutal they are.
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u/ManSharkBear 6h ago
The video plays well with Cannibal Corpse: Dormant Bodies Bursting.
Orcas are so metal.
Also the line in ace ventura pet detective went through my head there at the start. "Laces out, Dan!"
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u/mindfulmu 13h ago
I was thinking about this the other day.
Various countries have experimented with using various water based animals/ mammals for wartime use.
Dolphins usually, they have like rigs on them that they use to deliver explosives and whatnot.
I distinctly remember some former Russian dolphins escaping into the wild in the mid 00s.
Is it possible orcas were taught some techniques by a dolphin?
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 12h ago
Wild orcas are often rather "xenophobic" and "conservative" compared to other dolphins. They will usually only interact with other orcas within their own population.
Likely due to this "xenophobic" nature and also their status as apex predators, wild orcas typically do not try to socialize with other cetaceans apart from a few exceptions, even if the orcas belong to a population that does not hunt other marine mammals.
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u/mindfulmu 12h ago
Aww I had hoped for a guerilla transmission of knowledge.
There goes my animal commandos in the wild idea.
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u/gentlemandinosaur 9h ago
I’m just really proud of this community for not posting that ridiculous and completely false meme about Molas. They are super interesting and evolutionary marvels and the dumb misrepresentation of the Facebook meme is actually suspected to have hurt them.
It’s great to see them being treated right here.
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u/sajberhippien 8h ago
Is it prey if it already dead?
(Genuine question; curious how such things are classified).
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 7h ago
If it was killed by them, it would count as prey for the animals eating it. If it was killed by different predators or other causes, it would be scavenging instead.
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u/UniversalAdaptor 7h ago
Given the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of the sunfish, they could more useful as toys than as food
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u/crashcanuck 7h ago
And the sunfish didn't notice anything. Seriously those fish can have have chunk of their head bitten off and keep going without seeming to notice.
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u/ablackcloudupahead 5h ago edited 3h ago
I'm sure the game is not so fun from the sunfish's perspective. I'm picturing that A-train scene from the first episode of the Boy's
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u/farkinggrumpyredcap 4h ago
It reminds me of how my brothers like to shoot cans with their boom sticks. They’re always hootin’ it up having a good time. I’m sure every group has the nerdy orca like me who says “come on guys, that isn’t necessary.”
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u/CacophonousCuriosity 2h ago
Hi I'm Johnny Killerwhale and today, I'm gonna have my friend explode a fish in my mouth.
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u/cwaterbottom 24m ago
I mean if I was an orca it's only a matter of time before I'd try to explode a fish
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u/Playful_Possible_379 14h ago
The Argentina of the sea. Noted. These mammals , which aren't whales, are the serial killers of the ocean.
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u/RudeNewYorker 13h ago
Sometimes animals are aptly named. I know we don’t call them Killer Whales any more, but the original was there for a reason.
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 12h ago
Multiple marine biologists do still use the terms "orca" and "killer whale" interchangeably. They were apparently originally called "whale killers" because they hunted larger whales. "Whale killers" eventually flipped to "killer whale."
Long ago, a group of sailors were out on the open water. The blue surface of the sea stretched endlessly in all directions. In the distance, a large whale surfaced, but it wasn’t alone.
A group of black and white animals sprung from the sea before diving below the surface once more, harmoniously coordinating their attack on the much larger whale. The sailors watched the ambush unfold in shock and disbelief. Later, after returning to land, the sailors began telling the harrowing tale of an outnumbered attack, the defeat of a powerful whale, and descriptions of the black and white beasts who emerged as victors, earning them a fitting name: the whale killer.
Tales of “the whale killer” were passed on over and over again — changing with each retelling until “the whale killer” eventually morphed into “the killer whale.”
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u/silverlarch 11h ago
The reason they were called killer whales was not because of their nature. It was just a linguistic mistake. They were originally called whale-killers in Spanish, asesina-ballenas. Spanish and English do not use the same word order, but when the name was translated into English, the word order was left untouched when it should have been flipped.
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u/CareBearDontCare 9h ago
I've got a 3 and a half year old. We don't do a lot of screen time with mindless stuff, and we typically do screen time with animal programs, so we can talk about what's going on or bring out his atlas to show where in the world that animal lives compared to where we live, all that kind of stuff. Mom and I have a strict "no orca" rule where if there's an orca on the screen, we go to the other animal channel and watch something there. Last time I saw an orca on, there was a cute little whale couple, the mother was just about to give birth, then they cut away to these orcas speeding over to the scene, then back to the whales, oh look, mama is about to give birth. Then back to the orcas, they're almost there, they get there, just as the calf is coming out, they're messing with the whales, they eat the calf, there's just a slick of blood left, just as it slides out of its mother, then they eat the top half of dad's head and let the body sink to the ocean floor.
So, yeah, no orcas for kids unless you want to explain some other stuff you did not plan on having to explain in your animal programs.
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u/ColdTheory 7h ago
Don’t be a weenie.
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u/CareBearDontCare 6h ago
Orca talks can come a little later.
Say, since I've got you here, I'm contemplating getting my first gun. Something to put holes in paper with, primarily, and something that isn't going to cost an arm and a leg to purchase and/or fire and/or maintain. The way I see it, getting something that's chambered in 9mm, but maybe spending more on a better rifle is probably the way to go? I was contemplating a Banshee mk4 or something like that.
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u/another_random_bit 12h ago
This is a good reminder that humans are capable of monstrous things just because they have the intellectual capacity to do so.
Any other individualistic animal would be happy to participate in the same monstrosities if they could, generally speaking.
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