Meet Bubbles, a Dolphin in Australia That Chases Fish Until They Barf—Then Eats Their Upchucked Meals

But not Bubbles, a common bottlenose dolphin that lives off the east coast of Australia. Instead of going after the fish themselves, he hounds them until they throw up, then he swoops in and eats their vomit. Scientists describe Bubbles’ unusual—and gross—feeding strategy in a study published September 13 in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

They say their study represents one of the first detailed descriptions of kleptoparasitism, or food stealing, in cetaceans, the group of marine mammals that includes dolphins, whales and porpoises. Study co-author Asia Armstrong, a marine scientist at Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast, first became aware of Bubbles in 2017, when she watched video footage of his unconventional foraging technique. Intrigued, she rounded up some colleagues and decided to investigate.

A post shared by Master Reef Guides (@masterreefguides) Between June 2021 and October 2025, the team used GoPro cameras to capture instances of Bubbles feeding off Lady Elliot Island, a coral cay at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef east of mainland Queensland. The recordings show Bubbles, an adult male nicknamed by locals, swimming among schools of bigeye trevally. But rather than chowing down on the fish themselves, he would single one out, pursue it until it regurgitated, then eat its vomit.

He repeated this process multiple times during the same foraging session, performing up to ten chases in 30 minutes. The researchers recorded 20 total foraging attempts. Of those, Bubbles ate food regurgitated by a trevally 11 times.

The footage also revealed that, before approaching the schools of fish, Bubbles made clicking sounds and twisted his head from side to side. The scientists suspect he might have been using echolocation to figure out which trevally had full stomachs. Once he started chasing a single fish, Bubbles made repetitive clicking noises and low-frequency sounds.

These vocalizations may have scared the pursued animal into throwing up. (It’s also possible, however, that the fish were using puke as a decoy to save themselves from being eaten.) Why has Bubbles seemingly developed a taste for barf? Researchers aren’t sure what’s behind the behavior, but they have a few ideas. At first, he might have intended to eat the fish themselves—but after one threw up, he learned to take advantage of upchucked meals.