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Orcas in the Gulf of California have been filmed teaming up to smash dead sunfish to pieces.
To do this, one of them grabs the fish’s stubby tail (known a clavus) in its mouth and lets go just as a second orca is about to ram into it at high speed, resulting in an explosion of fish bits.
Researchers from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Mexico describe the behaviour in a new study published this week in the journal Frontiers of Ethology, where they speculate about why the orcas might be doing this.
“We think this may help younger orcas feed more easily or it could also just be for fun,” suggested lead author Kathryn Ayres, noting that orcas are known to play with their food.
In both cases, the prey was a sharp-tailed sunfish, which can grow to be up to three metres long and weigh two tonnes. It was already dead and the internal organs had been removed by the orcas before the ramming took place.
And while the adults were the ones doing the smashing, the pieces were largely eaten by the young orcas with them. The adults focused on the remaining large chunk that hadn’t broken up.
The behaviour was first witnessed and caught on video by Ayres, a scientist with the U.S. based ocean conservation group Beneath the Waves in July 2024, and caught on video. A similar incident was captured on video September 2025 in the same region by Héctor Franz, a digital creator who works in ecotourism. Erick Higuera, co-author of the study and executive director of Orcas México, told Smithsonian magazine he had previously seen similar behaviour in that region in 2021.
WATCH | Orcas ram a sunfish:
They researchers aren’t sure if the incidents involved the same orcas, as the footage wasn’t clear enough to identify them.
Because they’ve never seen other sunfish break into pieces like this when hit with a strong impact, the researchers suggested this could be a “species-specific structural response.” They added that this species’ clavus is more pronounced than that of other sunfish species, making it easier to position and hold steady for smashing.
Two boats were rammed by a pod of young orcas recently off the coast of Portugal. One of the boats sank. Experts say it was play behaviour, but the whales caused quite the fright.
Orcas have previously been seen tearing other kinds of prey into smaller pieces to share with their young.
Robert Pitman, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University told the New York Times the smashing technique may allow them to get at the meat without wearing down their teeth on the fish’s scales.
Orcas have been reported ramming boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal, which scientists speculate may be for fun. However, ramming prey to break it up hadn’t been seen before.
“They’re one of the most iconic marine predators in the world, yet they continue to surprise us.” Ayres said.
