Orcas Filmed Ramming a Sunfish So Hard It Explodes—Possibly Just for the Hell of It

Orcas in the Gulf of California have been observed ramming into sharp-tail sunfish at such speed and high power that the fish—one of the world’s heaviest—are almost completely obliterated. Orcas are known for deploying advanced hunting strategies, and for playing with their food, but this behavior has not been described before. Researchers, publishing their findings in Frontiers in Ethology, said that the “hold-to-ram” strategy had been observed in two separate hunting events in 2024 and 2025. In both instances the sunfish, a common food source for orcas in the surface waters of the Gulf of California, were already dead. Scientists can’t be sure whether it was the same orcas involved in both events. They’re also undecided as to whether this was a strategy designed to help juvenile orcas feed on the thousands of small pieces of sunfish, or whether the adult orcas were messing around. “We think this may help younger orcas feed more easily or it could also just be for fun,” said the observational study’s first author Dr Kathryn Ayres, a scientist at the Beneath The Waves nonprofit. “Orcas are known for playing with their food.” Ayres added, “They're one of the most iconic marine predators in the world, yet they continue to surprise us.”