Marine biologists have documented a novel, cooperative feeding behavior in the Gulf of California, Mexico, where killer whales teamed up to smash a massive ocean sunfish into small fragments. The encounter, formally described in Frontiers in Ethology, was captured on camera by Dr. Kathryn Ayres, a research scientist at the conservation organization Beneath The Waves.
During the recorded event, an adult female killer whale anchored the tail of an already-deceased sharp-tail sunfish—a species that can weigh up to 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds). Moments before impact, she released the carcass as a second adult male orca torpedoed into the fish at high speed. The violent collision produced an audible crunch under water, causing the massive sunfish to instantly burst into thousands of floating pieces.
Researchers noted that because the fish was already dead, the ramming served as a specialized food-processing technique rather than a killing blow. The resulting fragments allowed a juvenile orca present in the pod to feed easily on smaller chunks of flesh while adults consumed the remaining core. A similar separate encounter recorded in September 2025 suggests the method represents a structured, learned behavior within regional pods.
