The salmon hat craze was first observed in 1987 when a female orca in the Puget Sound area of the northeast Pacific was seen carrying a solitary dead fish on her nose. Within a few weeks the behavior was picked up by members of other pods, suggesting something about it must have appealed.

Orcas off the coast of Washington State are balancing dead fish on their heads like it's the 1980s, but researchers still aren't sure why they do it.