Wild orcas seen giving ‘gifts’ of dead animals to humans: study

Orcas are blowing scientists’ minds.

Wild orcas, also called killer whales, have been seen giving gifts to humans, approaching them either in boats or on the shore with an offering in their mouths — perhaps as an act of “kindness,” marine experts say.

In a study published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, researchers found that killer whales may offer to share their prey with humans, “like a proud cat leaving a bird on its owner’s doorstep,” the authors wrote.

This research represents some of the first detailed descriptions of non-domesticated animals offering food to humans, as dogs and cats often do.

“Gifts” from orcas have included fish, birds, stingrays, chunks of meat and, in one instance, a turtle.

“Orcas often share food with each other — it’s a prosocial activity and a way that they build relationships with each other,” study lead author Jared Towers, of Bay Cetology in British Columbia, Canada, said in a statement. “That they also share with humans may show their interest in relating to us as well.”

The incidents — 11 times involving humans in the water when approached, 21 times with humans on boats and two times with people on the shore — took place in orca populations around the world, including California, New Zealand, Norway and Patagonia.

One young female orca “approached a camera I had in the water to film her younger brother and then opened her mouth and let out a dead seabird,” Towers told CNN. The killer whale paused and waited for a reaction before swallowing the bird again.

A few years later, Towers saw another young female orca that “dropped a freshly killed harbor seal pup right beside my boat.”

Researchers recorded 34 interactions over two decades, between 2004 and 2024, of wild orcas attempting to give food to humans, and the act of apparent kindness seems to be consistent and deliberate.

To be included in the study, the event had to meet strict criteria: The whales had to have approached the humans of their own accord and dropped an item in front of them — humans could not have approached the whale first.

After releasing the gift to the human, the orca will sit around and wait, seemingly for a human response — similar to how a dog will bring their owner an object and wait for them to react. This happened in all but one case.

In seven instances, the orcas tried more than once to offer the food to the humans after they initially refused it.

The researchers, from Canada, New Zealand and Mexico, said that the behavior makes sense considering orcas are intelligent and social animals that use food as a way to make relationships.

Orcas also often hunt prey that is larger than they are, so they sometimes have food to spare.

“Offering items to humans could simultaneously include opportunities for killer whales to practice learned cultural behavior, explore, or play and in so doing learn about, manipulate, or develop relationships with us,” the researchers wrote.

“Given the advanced cognitive abilities and social, cooperative nature of this species, we assume that any or all these explanations for, and outcomes of such behavior are possible.”

However, researchers aren’t ruling out a more sinister theory.

“We do not know the end goal of the cases reported here or even if there were any, but captive killer whales have been known to use dead prey to attract other species and then kill, but not always eat them,” the team wrote in the study.

But there is no record of orcas ever killing humans in the wild, and there’s been no sign of aggression towards humans.

“I don’t think it’s easy to suggest there is one reason for this behavior because there are underlying mechanisms and proximate causes,” Towers explained.

“The main underlying mechanism is simply that they can afford to offer us food and the main proximate cause may be that they are doing so as a way to explore and subsequently learn more about us.”