'Oh my god!' Orca deliberately rams into sunfish so hard that it exploded. For food or fun?
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "'Oh my god!' Orca deliberately rams into sunfish so hard that it exploded. For food or fun?")
Two orcas skillfully broke apart a sunfish into several pieces likely for food. Photograph: (Kathryn Ayres)
Orcas were seen doing something unthinkable in the Gulf of California. A pair got hold of a sunfish, with one of them holding it and the other ramming into it at full speed, breaking it into several pieces. The mid-sea action left scientists stunned.
A pair of orcas did something unbelievable in the Gulf of California, headbutting into a sunfish with such power that it exploded into several pieces. Orcas are extremely aggressive predators, but this was unlike anything scientists had seen before. The sunfish was already dead, but it is enormous, bony and weighs 2,000 kilograms. So feeding on it is not easy for the orcas. The technique is a way to process the food so that the younger calves can consume it easily. However, it is also possible that they are doing it purely for fun.
The observations were published in the journal Frontiers in Ethology on July 23. The researchers dubbed this behaviour "ram-to-fragment." They observed it happening twice, in 2024 and 2025. The aim was not to kill the sunfish, since it was already dead, but to split it into fragments to make it easier for the young to feed.
The video shows one orca holding a sharp-tail sunfish, as its partner rams into it at full speed. The first fish releases it moments before impact, after which the carcass explodes, sending the flesh flying all around the sea.
Kathryn Ayres, a scientist at the conservation nonprofit Beneath the Waves, told Live Science, "It was unlike anything I'd witnessed before." Orcas have been seen using this technique in the past as well, but never before have scientists seen one bursting.
Orca smashes sunfish into hundreds of pieces
The first encounter was recorded in July 2024 off Baja California Sur, Mexico. An adult female orca held the tail-like clavus, or rudder, while an adult male orca zoomed towards it, as the female released the fish seconds before the male struck. A loud boom can be heard, as Ayres lets out an "Oh my god!" in shock.
A young orca then comes and feeds on the pieces of flesh, while the adults eat what's on the carcass. "I had also seen orcas ram their prey previously, but I had never witnessed an impact powerful enough to completely fragment the tissue like this," Ayres said.
Diver Héctor Franz recorded the second scene in September 2025, where a similar scene unfolded. Orcas have been previously documented using the same technique on whale sharks, taking turns ramming into them.
