Overview

• Citizen scientists Allison Kelly Estevez and Michael Estevez recorded two adult orcas gently nibbling each other’s tongues on a GoPro during a snorkeling trip in Norway’s Kvænangen fjords in 2024.
• Scientifically known as tongue-nibbling, the kissing-like interaction had only been sporadically observed in orcas under human care since its first mention in 1978.
• The encounter included three separate episodes lasting 10, 26 and 18 seconds, with a combined duration of 1 minute 49 seconds before the whales parted.
• Javier Almunia and colleagues published the findings in Oceans and compared the wild footage with captive observations at Tenerife’s Loro Parque and similar behaviors in beluga whales.
• Researchers argue that the rarity of such natural recordings underscores the need for enhanced underwater monitoring and citizen-science collaborations to reveal elusive marine behaviors.