If a killer whale came up to you while you were swimming in the sea, your first thought probably wouldn’t be: what’s for dinner? More likely, you’d be worried that you are dinner.
But wild killer whales have never killed a human – they have, however, offered people food.
A team of researchers, each of whom have experienced such an offering, decided to collate reports of this behaviour. Over a two-decade timespan, they found 34 instances of wild killer whales approaching humans and offering food.
The killer whales would swim up to a boat, swimmer or, occasionally, someone on land, and offer prey items– most often dead fish, but sometimes stunned stingrays, incapacitated sharks or dead birds.
The whale would then wait for the human’s reaction.
Most often, the human ignored the offering, in which case the whales either recovered the item and tried to share it with the person again, shared the item with pod-mates, or swam away. A few times, the human tossed the food back to the whale, who then tossed it to the human again.
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Killer whales attempting to share food with humans have been reported in six different populations across four oceans. This suggests the behaviour is widespread, and is not just a fad adopted by a single pod.
It is rare for wild animals to offer food to unrelated individuals of the same species, let alone to another species altogether. But killer whales buck this trend. They frequently share food with one another.
This is thought to have evolved as a form of ‘reciprocity’, whereby sharing food with a pod-mate means a higher likelihood of receiving a future favour from them. So while there is a short-term cost to sharing, in the longer-term it is beneficial.
The researchers suggest that killer whales might offer food to humans as a byproduct of this behaviour. But there is an alternative: killer whales – clever and playful animals – might be using food as a way to learn more about us.
So, if a killer whale ever approaches you, you probably have nothing to fear. And you might even be the lucky recipient of a (not-so) tasty treat.
The researchers stress that humans shouldn’t encourage these interactions though: wild whales should not be approached. If a killer whale wants to share its dinner, it’ll do so on its own terms.
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Find out more about the study: Testing the Waters: Attempts by Wild Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) to Provision People (Homo sapiens)
Video and image credit: Towers, J. R., Visser, I. N., & Prigollini, V. (2025)
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