Orcas give gifts, but they want something back

Wild orcas have started handing things to people. Dead fish, seabirds, a stingray, once a piece of liver. They swim up to boats and kayaks, drop the object, and wait.

A 2024 study published in Biological Conservation catalogued dozens of these events, primarily involving the Northern Resident orca population. In nearly every case the orca stayed nearby afterwards, watching. If the human ignored the gift, the orca often picked it up and offered it again.

This behaviour has a name in animal cognition: cross-species food sharing. Orcas do it with each other constantly. Mothers feed older calves long after weaning. Adults share prey with unrelated pod members. They appear to be extending a deeply social habit to a species that isn't theirs.

What makes it strange is that orcas don't need anything from us. They're apex predators with no natural threats. They aren't being trained, baited, or fed. Whatever is happening, the initiative is entirely on their side.

Some think it's curiosity — a test, the way a child offers a stranger a toy to see what they'll do. Others suspect something closer to play, or an attempt to provoke a reaction from an animal they find genuinely interesting. A few have floated the most uncomfortable possibility: that the orcas know exactly what they're doing, and are trying to make friends.

Orca brains possess an expanded paralimbic system, a set of structures linked to emotion and social processing that is more prominent in cetaceans than in any other mammal group. They have culture: distinct dialects, distinct hunting techniques, distinct funeral behaviours that pass down generations.

Off the coast of Norway one winter, an orca pushed a half-eaten herring towards a diver three times. The diver swam away. The orca followed her for almost an hour, carrying the fish.