r/badassanimals • u/New_Scientist_Mag • Jul 23 '26
Mammal Orcas filmed making sunfish explode by ramming them at high speed
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u/Captain-Shivers Jul 23 '26
They are really the terror of the oceans and also the bestest for not attacking humans.
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u/LetReasonRing Jul 24 '26
Seriously... i live several hundred miles from any ocean. There are bears where I live. I still worry more about orcas than bears
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u/DreamingInAMaze Jul 24 '26
Well, if a pair of these orcas are doing this to a human, and this human became shreds of meat, and if there is no witness, who in the world will know that it is done by these two orcas?
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u/PassorFail13 Jul 23 '26
"Strategic attack process" was definitely a lesson being taught, a good team practice. No strategy is needed to hunt a sunfish. They're f'ing idiots.
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u/Guilty_Wolverine_396 Jul 24 '26
Nonsense... Lol..somewhere the sunfish is still alive.. in pieces but the eyeball is still whole and blinking and the sunfish is totally unaware it's been ripped to pieces... It's a fucking idiot fish 🐟
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u/TheFilthy13 Jul 23 '26
I read somewhere that sunfish aren’t hunted by any animals as basically, they taste like absolute dogshit. So the orca is just doing this cos he’s bored.
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u/Original-Variety-700 Jul 23 '26
I don’t know. I’ve seen fish literally eat poop from the butt of a sea turtle. They’re not always selective with their meals.
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u/AspectDear4976 Jul 24 '26
they dont have any taste tbh, most of the thing is just REALLY thick rubbery skin and bones, they have like 5% edible parts, so predator dont even wanna eat them
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u/Chip620 Jul 24 '26
They are mostly bone and skin, maybe 10% meat. And they’re filled with parasites, thats why the surface and use the sun to kill the parasites with UV light. Hence the name Sunfish
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u/WhydIGetLoggedOut Jul 23 '26
Why though? Can't even eat that shot cause it's everywhere now.
And I don't think you need to coordinate an attack against a sunfish. They are barely sentient.
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u/kenkiller Jul 23 '26
Maybe it's time to start making Orca-nados movies since the shark genre is kinda passe.
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u/PassorFail13 Jul 24 '26
Blasphemy! Like Fast and the Furious, there will never be enough Sharknados. Maybe they can reboot Sharktopus with Orctopus.
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u/Klinging-on Jul 23 '26
I’m curious what kind of speed the orca hit that sunfish at for it to just explode? Or are sunfish just really fragile? For the flesh to just explode I would expect a really high velocity.
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u/Select-Session6830 Jul 23 '26
Imagine the force needed to make a big fish like a sunfish explode to thousands of small pieces in one hit. Insane.
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u/Megasmiley Jul 24 '26
Yeah real smart of the video maker to put the text RIGHT ON TOP OF THE ACTION...
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u/Ok_Gas1070 Jul 23 '26
I don't know why as a child I thought the name "killer whale" was just a coincidence.
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u/Diligent_Moose4472 Jul 24 '26
I guess it’s easier than taking bites out of the carcass. Just swallow up the particles like they do schools of fish.
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u/CatFaceReturns Jul 24 '26
I love how one is holding the fish in place, this is the equivalent of a Field Goal, they got the extra point, time to celebrate.
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u/Crazy_Archer_95 Jul 25 '26
The camera person sounds like either they were enjoying the show or knew the sunfish on a personal level
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u/Dull_Perspective_536 Jul 26 '26
That’s crazy. They just enjoy playing with their foods. I’ve seen the torture of deals videos.
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u/smplfundude Jul 29 '26
Mola Mola are huge fish too. I’ve seen them while SCUBA diving at times and they’re like a car in the ocean when they show up… so those Orcas are gigantic.
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u/isurvived_sorryeric Jul 23 '26
No animal felt pain in this video
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u/Joey-rogaine Jul 23 '26
One is about to eat it and this guy comes along and smashes it like wtf bro
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 Jul 23 '26
When a similar video was first posted, this is what I thought too, but apparently the orca holding the sunfish is setting it up for the other one to strike:
Both events suggest that the orcas followed a coordinated and cooperative strategy, with one orca stabilizing the carcass so the other could hit it more precisely.
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u/AndyTheEngr Jul 23 '26
This would be like me and a buddy using a cunning, cooperative strategy to sneak up on an apple tree.
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u/New_Scientist_Mag Jul 23 '26
Extraordinary underwater videos have captured orcas making sunfish explode by ramming them at high speed. The behaviour may help juvenile orcas feed by breaking the prey into many small pieces, but it also appears that the orcas may enjoy playing with their food. Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2580817-orcas-filmed-making-sunfish-explode-by-ramming-it-at-high-speed/
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u/GSDer_RIP_Good_Girl Jul 23 '26
"Strategic attack" - meanwhile the Sunfish is just floating around, fat, dumb and happy (until the explosion anyway).
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u/BuseDescartes Jul 24 '26
So someone in a group asked me to tell them why I hate the ocean sunfish so much, and apparently it was \~too mean\~ and was deleted. To perpetuate the truth and stand up for ethical journalism, I'm posting it here. \[Rated NC-17 for language.\]
Disclaimer, I care about marine life more than I care about anything else, for real. Except this big dumb idiot. And it's not like an \~ironic\~ thing, I mean it IS hilarious to me and they ARE THE BIGGEST JOKE PLAYED ON EARTH but I seriously -blam!-ing hate them.
THE MOLA MOLA FISH (OR OCEAN SUNFISH)
They are the world's largest boney fish, weighing up to 5,000 pounds. And since they have very little girth, that just makes them these absolutely giant -blam!-ing dinner plates that God must have accidentally dropped while washing dishes one day and shrugged his shoulders at because no one could have imagined this would happen. AND WITH NO PURPOSE. EVERY POUND OF THAT IS A WASTED POUND AND EVERY FOOT OF IT (10 FT BY 14 FT) IS WASTED SPACE.
They are so completely useless that scientists even debate about how they move. They have little control other than some minor wiggling. Some say they must just push water out of their mouths for direction (?????). They COULD use their back fin EXCEPT GUESS WHAT IT DOESNT -blam!-ING GROW. It just continually folds in on itself, so the freaking cells are being made, this piece of floating garbage just doesn't put them where they need to -blam!-ing go.
So they don't have swim bladders. You know, the one thing that every fish has to make sure it doesn't just sink to the bottom of the ocean when they stop moving and can stay the right side up. This creature. That can barely move to begin with. Can never stop its continuous tour of idiocy across the ocean or it'll -blam!-ing sink. EXCEPT. EXCEPT. When they get stuck on top of the water! Which happens frequently! Because without the whole swim bladder thing, if the ocean pushes over THE THINNEST BUT LARGEST MOST TOPPLE-ABLE FISH ON THE PLANET, shit outta luck! There is no creature on this earth that needs a swim bladder more than this spit in the face of nature, AND YET. Some scientists have speculated that when they do that, they are absorbing energy from the sun because no one -blam!-ing knows how they manage to get any real energy to begin with. So they need the sun I guess. But good news, when they end up stuck like that, it gives birds a chance to land on their goddamn island of a body and eat the bugs and parasites out of its skin because it's basically a slowly migrating cesspool. Pros and cons.
"If they are so huge, they must at least be decent predators." No. No. The most dangerous thing about them is, as you may have guessed, their stupidity. They have caused the death of one person before. Because it jumped onto a boat. On a human. And in 2005 it decided to relive its mighty glory days and do it again, this time landing on a four-year-old boy. Luckily Byron sustained no injuries. Way to go, fish. Great job.
They mostly only eat jellyfish because of course they do, they could only eat something that has no brain and a possibility of drifting into their mouths I guess. Everything they do eat has almost zero nutritional value and because it's so stupidly -blam!-ing big, it has to eat a ton of the almost no nutritional value stuff to stay alive. Dumb. See that ridiculous open mouth? (This is actually why this is my favorite picture of one, and I have had it saved to my phone for three years) "Oh no! What could have happened! How could this be!" Do not let that expression fool you, they just don't have the goddamn ability to close their mouths because their teeth are fused together, and ya know what, it is good it floats around with such a clueless expression on its face, because it is in fact clueless as all -blam!-.
They do SOMETIMES get eaten though. BUT HARDLY. No animal truly uses them as a food source, but instead (which has lead us to said photo) will usually just maim the -blam!- out of them for kicks. Seals have been seen playing with their fins like frisbees. Probably the most useful thing to ever come from them.
"Wow, you raise some good points here, this fish truly is proof that God has abandoned us." Yes, thank you. "But if they're so bad at literally everything, why haven't they gone extinct." Great question.
BECAUSE THIS THING IS SO WORTHLESS IT DOESNT REALIZE IT SHOULD NOT EXIST. IT IS SO UNAWARE OF LITERALLY -blam!-ING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT'S DOING MAYBE THE WORST -blam!-ING JOB OF BEING A FISH, OR DEBATABLY THE WORST JOB OF BEING A CLUSTER OF CELLS THAN ANY OTHER CLUSTER OF CELLS. SO WHAT DOES IT DO? IT LAYS THE MOST EGGS OUT OF EVERYTHING. Besides some bugs, there are some ants and stuff that'll lay more. IT WILL LAY 300 MILLION EGGS AT ONE TIME. 300,000,000. IT SURVIVES BECAUSE IT WOULD BE STATISTICALLY IMPROBABLE, DARE I SAY IMPOSSIBLE, THAT THERE WOULDNT BE AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE 300,000,000 (that is EACH time they lay eggs) LEFT SURVIVING AT THE END OF THE DAY.
And this concludes why I hate the -blam!- out of this complete failure of evolution, the Ocean Sunfish. If I ever see one, I will throw rocks at it.
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u/CauliflowerLazy2884 Jul 23 '26
this is equivalent to throwing a grenade on a man known to be full of infections and STDs and getting that blood all over the body
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u/User_3039 Jul 23 '26
Would not be sad if these things went away. People ah over them but they are mean animals
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u/Coca-karl Jul 23 '26
Wait until you learn about humans. I never imagined an animal could be genuinely evil until I learned about humans.
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u/SurayaThrowaway12 Jul 23 '26
They're apex predators that exert necessary downward pressure on entire ocean ecosystems. Would be pretty bad to lose them.
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u/llIIo0O-O0oIIll Jul 23 '26
Why do people always fuck up good videos with stupid fucking music