A dark, slender small whale that hunts fish and squid in warm seas.
Its head has no obvious beak, and each flipper has a distinctive hump along its leading edge.
False killer whales around Hawaiʻi show a wide range of diving depths. Kratofil et al. combined five time-depth recorder deployments and 16 satellite-tag deployments made between 1999 and 2025. The whales spent much of their time near the surface and often dived in the epipelagic zone, but some dives reached near the seafloor and depths beyond 1,000 m; the deepest recorded was 1,424 m.
Dive depth was associated with currents, mixed-layer depth, lunar phase and body size, while individuals varied substantially. These observations suggest flexible use of the water column across ocean settings. Deep dives and identified prey are separate observations in this study. The 1,424 m record is one maximum within a broad behavioral range, not a typical depth for the species.
IUCN Red List · Near Threatened (NT) · Global species-level assessment
The 2018 global IUCN assessment lists the False Killer Whale as Near Threatened (NT), assessed on 23 July 2018, with the global population trend recorded as Unknown. The assessment also describes evidence of a decline exceeding 50% in less than two generations for the Main Hawaiian Islands insular population. This regional finding appears separately from the unknown global trend.