00:00Orcas wearing salmon hats, a window into whale culture.
00:05Orcas wearing salmon-like hats sounds fake.
00:08But researchers have seen this behavior before.
00:11In 1987, southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest briefly carried dead salmon on their heads, and then the
00:18fad disappeared.
00:20Decades later, new sightings made people wonder if the strange trend had returned.
00:25The tempting headline calls it a virtue signal.
00:29That is probably too human.
00:32Orcas do have culture.
00:34They learn from each other.
00:37Different pods can have different calls, hunting styles, food habits, and social traditions.
00:43A behavior can spread through a group even when humans cannot see an obvious survival purpose.
00:49That does not mean the whales are showing off morality.
00:53It may be play.
00:54It may be food handling.
00:56It may be imitation.
00:59It may happen when salmon are abundant enough that whales can afford to be weird with dinner.
01:05The better story is not that orcas invented human-style signaling.
01:09It is that their social lives are rich enough for trends to appear, vanish, and maybe return.
01:16A dead fish balanced on a whale's head looks silly.
01:20But underneath it is something serious.
01:24A brain powerful enough to copy, experiment, remember, and make culture in the ocean.
01:30That possibility is exactly why scientists keep watching the same families year after year.
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