A study published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology documented 34 cases in which wild orcas approached people of their own accord and offered them prey or other objects — encounters recorded across four oceans over more than two decades.
The research was led by biologist Jared Towers of Bay Cetology, a research group based in British Columbia, alongside Ingrid Visser of the Orca Research Trust in New Zealand and Vanessa Prigollini of the Marine Education Association of La Paz, Mexico.
Together, they compiled cases that occurred between 2004 and 2024 off the coasts of California, New Zealand, Norway, Alaska, and Patagonia, among other regions.
How the Dataset Was Assembled
For a case to qualify, it had to meet strict criteria: the orca had to initiate the approach itself, release the prey close enough to make clear the offer was meant for the person, and then remain nearby to observe what happened next.
Using those criteria, the researchers set aside ambiguous encounters and arrived at 34 cases. Of those, 21 involved people on boats, 11 involved swimmers, and two involved people standing on shore.
Across all the encounters, the orcas offered prey from 18 distinct species: six fish, five mammals, three invertebrates, two birds, one reptile, and even a piece of algae.
Among the items recorded were rays, a green sea turtle, an ocean sunfish, a sevengill shark, and a seabird. In half the cases, the prey was intact; in the other half, it had already been partially consumed.
What Happened After Each Offering
In 97% of the encounters, the orca waited for a reaction before moving on.
Most of the time — 88% of cases — the person did not accept the prey. When that happened, the orca typically retrieved the food and swam away, or shared it with other members of its group.
In only seven of the 34 cases did the animal try to offer the prey more than once after an initial rejection — a reminder that persistence was the exception, not the rule.
The researchers explicitly ruled out the possibility that these were purely playful interactions.
Most of the populations studied were orcas that hunt near the surface and regularly share prey among themselves — a cooperative behavior that is already well documented in the species.
Why They Do It
Towers explained that food sharing is a common practice among orcas, which often hunt prey larger than they need and are left with food to spare.
According to the authors, offering that food to another species could reflect several motives at once: practicing a culturally learned behavior, exploring a novel interaction, playing, or attempting to understand and eventually form a bond with humans.
The researchers themselves are cautious about a more ambitious interpretation — that orcas understand what a person is thinking, a concept known in cognitive science as theory of mind.
That hypothesis has not been ruled out, but neither does this study prove it. The research documents the behavior; it does not explain with certainty what drives it.
Erich Hoyt, a researcher with Whale and Dolphin Conservation who was not involved in the study, described the work as carefully conducted and noted that the authors were measured in their conclusions.
None of the 34 cases involved orca populations that feed exclusively on fish in deep water — a detail that suggests surface-based cooperative hunting may be directly linked to these interactions with people.
