Wild orcas have been trying to feed people, new research shows

SEATTLE — Wild orcas on more than 30 occasions in four oceans have attempted to share their prey with people, potentially to develop relationships with humans, researchers have found.

In each of the instances recorded over two decades, orcas approached a person within a length of the orca’s body, and dropped freshly hunted prey in front of the human, then waited for a response, according to a paper reporting the behavior published Monday in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

Orcas of every age tried to share their prey, and just about everything was on the menu: sea otter, harbor seal, common murre, gray whale, green turtle, eagle ray, starfish, jellyfish, on and on.

Orcas are the ocean’s top predator, and their brains are second only to modern humans in terms of their size in relation to their body. Their capacity for advanced communications and cognitive, social and emotional intelligence is well known. Prey sharing is common in orca culture.

So just what are the orcas doing, offering food to people?

Researchers ruled out play, because the incidents were short, lasting only about 30 seconds. And it’s mostly young orcas that play, and orcas of every age offered food. So it seems what is going on is exploration, the scientists surmised: The orcas are curious to see what happens if they offer us food.

In most instances, the researchers ignored the offer. But when some took the food and offered it back, the orca either passed it back again, or took it and shared it with its relatives.

Orcas shared their food in all kinds of ways: dropping it in front of divers underwater, serving it up at the surf line along shore and by approaching boats. The attempts only counted in the research paper if the orca on its own volition approached a person, came within its body length and clearly was offering food. Attempts were not counted if a person had approached the orca.

Jared Towers, executive director of Bay Cetology, a research nonprofit based in Alert Bay, British Columbia, was on a boat in waters at the northeastern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, when a transient orca offered a freshly-killed harbor seal pup. “I did not have my phone out when T046C2 came over and dropped the seal,” Towers wrote in an email, “But I had time to get it when she left it there sinking before circling around to pick it up again.” He took a photo, showing the orca’s still-open, toothy mouth after just releasing the seal.

“You are left with a feeling of disbelief in the moment, did that just happen?” Towers said in an interview. “I just froze, you don’t naturally want to reach out and grab something a killer whale just left in front of you,” Towers said. “Maybe if you had a few moments to think about it you’d think, ‘Maybe I should accept this, or give it back.’ But in the moment, it was going on before you realize what is happening, they retrieved the item, and swam away.”

The orca potlatch moment was electrifying. “It kept me up at night, I could not let it go,” Towers said. Talking with other whale researchers about what had happened, Towers learned they, too, had experienced orcas trying to share food. In waters all over the world.

Sometimes what is going on felt more like fetch. Towers recalled a seabird brought to him by an orca alongside his research boat. “I collected it and chucked it back in the water and the killer whale picked it up and brought it back to me,” Towers said.

“It gives you a lot to think about, it feels special, you spend a lot of time trying to understand these animals, and they don’t give up their secrets easily, and so when they actually stop and pay attention to you, it is a bit of a shock.”

Ingrid Visser, of Orca Research Trust, a research nonprofit in New Zealand, and another author on the paper, said “Orca are very social and we frequently see them food-sharing. To document and describe behavior of them attempting to food-share with humans in various places around the globe is fascinating.”

Third author Vanessa Prigollini, of the Marine Education Association in La Paz, Mexico, said the orcas’ behavior was “indicating their interest in building relationships outside their own species.”

No one should be surprised, said Carl Safina, author of multiple books on animal intelligence, and founding president of The Safina Center. Orcas are the largest dolphin, and dolphins are well known to be extraordinarily smart, he noted.

“What I think in a sense is more impressive is that humans basically give no credit to any other creature for having a mind,” Safina said. Yet many other creatures, including orcas, understand implicitly that humans have minds. “So they understand us, and give us more credit there, they seem to comprehend the world better than we do, in our self-imposed estrangement.”

This loneliness is a specifically Western affliction, Safina said, noting many Indigenous societies worldwide understand themselves to be in relation with a vast intelligence of other nonhuman beings. “They see the world as one big family, it’s only Western humans who continually ask or are afraid to say that other creatures are even conscious,” Safina said.

That stance has consequences: “It’s the devaluation of the physical world and everything that lives in it that has facilitated the recklessness and the destruction and the unthinking cruelty that we seem to continually generate,” Safina said. “To me the surprising thing is how deeply and insistently we refuse to get that we are in a world or relatives.” However he is not surprised an orca making a kill would invite us to their feast.

However, having seen a photo of humans pouring a beer and pretzels into the open mouth of a dolphin approaching their boat, he hopes that people will not take orcas up on their offer to engage.

Not because of what the orca might do, but because of the frequent failings of homo sapiens. “Interacting with them would be a big plus,” he said of wild animals in general. “But it often goes so terribly wrong, because people do it so badly.”

The paper also cautions people to keep their distance from orcas, no matter the invitation, “due to the potential for either species to engage in behavior that is harmful to the other.”