CNN
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When researcher Jared Towers sets up a camera under the water and observes a pair of killer whales, he sees something strange.
One of the orcas, The boy said, “I approached the camera I had in the water to photograph my younger brother, and opened my mouth and released a dead seabird.” Tower, The executive director of Baysetlogy, a Canadian team of marine biologists based in Alert Bay, British Columbia, told CNN.
She closed her mouth and paused, apparently watching the tower’s reaction, a dead seabird floated above her while she hangs in the water. Then, a few seconds later, she rolled towards the camera and swallowed the bird again.
A few years later, Towers saw another young woman, Killer Whale, showing the same behavior. This time Orca “dropped a newly killed harbor seal puppy right next to my boat.”
Towers discussed these incidents with colleagues around the world and discovered that they were also given food by killer whales.
When he collated the instances, he discovered 34 cases of killer whales presenting food to humans between 2004 and 2024.
He and his colleagues laid out their findings in a recently published paper in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, which attempts to unravel the reasons why Killer Whales are doing this.
Perhaps they hypothesized, killer whales are interested and explore how humans respond to gifts. Maybe they’re playing, but they mostly discount this theory. Because not just boys, but whales of all ages provision food. Or perhaps it’s more ominous. Killer whales are known to use their prey to attract other species to kill them, but there is no record of orcas killing humans in the wild.
“I don’t think it’s easy to suggest that there is one reason for this behavior because of the underlying mechanisms and causes of proximity,” Towers says.
“The main underlying mechanism is that they can afford to serve us food, and the main source of the approximation may be that they are doing so as a way to explore us and then learn more.”
In all but one of the recorded cases, the murderers first awaited a response from humans, but most of them recovered humans before they retrieved the food, but some simply abandoned it, some even tried to give it back.
Humans almost always ignored food. They only took it four times, three of which then returned to the water.
Pets bring their owner’s gifts – think of dead mice and birds that cats go out the door – and animals are observed to give gifts to each other. However, so far, few recorded cases of wild predators giving gifts to humans, except for a few examples of fake killer whales – Dolphin seeds and leopard stickers to serve food to people.
“In a way, that’s not surprising, because anyone riding in the water with … (the killer whale) has experienced the interaction of knowing something is going on between us and them.
Killer whales are one of the most intelligent animals. Research shows that only people with larger brains than their body size. And they kill animals that are much larger than other whales and dolphins compared to their own size. This means they can have more food around.
They are also thought to have spindle neurons in the brain, a type of neuron known to be associated with empathy — said Phillippa Braws, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Exeter, specializing in whales and dolphins who are not involved in the study.
She added that determining motivation is difficult “as we can’t interview them,” but she suggested to CNN That it could be “altruistic” or merely a “basic biological function” that mimics “what you might do to a boy.”
Researchers found that it doesn’t matter where the world’s whales are, whether they are male or female, calves, boys or adults. They all showed this behavior.
It fits into the broader pattern of killer whales that often begin to interact with humans and boats, providing further insight into their lives.
And the tower hopes to serve as a reminder that “our species are clearly more technologically advanced than any other species on Earth, but share welfare with other highly evolved species that we must consider in our actions.”
Call to Earth is a CNN-edited series that, together with solutions, addresses the environmental challenges facing our planet. Rolex’s Permanent Planet Initiative We partnered with CNN to promote awareness and education on key sustainability issues and encourage positive action.
