• Orca and human brains have similar features that give them high-functioning abilities like empathy.
• Orcas also have a high sense of self-awareness, which they use to develop unique hunting tactics.
• Orcas also have very wrinkly brains, which enables them to think and process information quickly.

Although orcas are technically dolphins, their size and ferocity have earned them the nickname "killer whale."

They've been known to hunt virtually anything in the water, including blue whales, great white sharks, and even boats.

Orcas can swim up to 30 miles per hour and have sharp teeth to tear into their prey — but their most dangerous weapon is actually their brain.

Orca and human brains are very similar

An orca's brain is five times larger than a human's, but it has many of the same structures that ours do.

For example, orcas have a highly developed insula and cingulate sulcus that give them self-awareness, understanding of social relationships, and empathy. These heightened skills come in handy for their hunting tactics.

Moreover, "cetaceans like orcas and bottlenose dolphins also have a uniquely elaborated brain area called the paralimbic system," Lori Marino, the founder and president of The Whale Sanctuary Project and a neuroscientist who studies cetacean intelligence, said.

In fact, the paralimbic system in orca brains has much more intricate folding and detail than human brains do.

It's unclear what the advantage may be, but based on their knowledge of other brain areas, scientists think this intricate paralimbic system helps combine information from the parts of the orca's brain that process emotions with those in charge of higher-level thinking.

Orcas understand the power of numbers

Orca social groups, or pods, can range from five to 30 orcas, but pods can team up in even larger groups for a big hunt, like when 80 orcas took down a 59-foot blue whale in 2021.

Video of the event showed how the orcas corralled the whale toward the surface, and then groups of six to eight took turns body-slamming the whale and rolling over its blowhole so it couldn't breathe. The hunt took more than three hours.

Plus, their large numbers helped ward off rival predators, including pilot whales and a hammerhead shark, from stealing the food.

Each pod has its own unique hunting techniques that target its prey's weaknesses. For example, Antarctic seals are an entirely different prey from blue whales.

A fleeing seal may take refuge on ice floes, but they don't stay safe for long. The orcas can create choppy waves that break up the floes, and the seals slide straight into their waiting mouths.

This is made all the more impressive because pods not only pass down their hunting techniques, but also their unique "dialect" of communicative clicks and whistles to offspring across generations.

Orcas are one of the only other creatures besides humans to have evolved this level of complex culture, per the Orca Network.