‘Like someone whacking a piñata’: orcas explode sunfish by ramming them at high speed

Per The Conversation, scientists have documented a never-before-seen hunting technique among orcas in the Gulf of California. Two whales work together in what researchers call 'ram-to-fragment' behavior: one holds a sunfish steady while another rams it from below at high speed, exploding the prey into pieces—like someone whacking a piñata. The behavior, described in a new paper in Frontiers in Ethology, reveals the remarkable coordination and intelligence of these marine mammals, and may allow the entire pod to share the meal.

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