When researcher Jared Towers set up his cameras underwater to observe a pair of killer whales, he saw something strange.

One of the orcas, a juvenile female, “approached a camera I had in the water to film her younger brother and then opened her mouth and let out a dead seabird,” Towers, the executive director of Bay Cetology, a Canadian team of marine biologists based in Alert Bay, British Columbia, told CNN.

She closed her mouth, paused, apparently watching for Towers’ reaction and hung in the water while the dead seabird floated up above her. Then, after a few seconds, she rolled around towards the camera and swallowed the bird again.

A few years later, Towers saw another young female killer whale displaying the same behavior – this time, however, the orca “dropped a freshly killed harbor seal pup right beside my boat.”

Towers discussed these incidents with his colleagues around the world, discovering that they too had been gifted food by killer whales.