Orca Emoji

A black-and-white orca (killer whale) shown in side profile, with the distinctive tall dorsal fin and white eye-patch. Approved in Emoji 17.0 (2025) as U+1FACDU+1FACD, making it one of the newest animal emojis in the standard. The formal proposal L2/24-249 cited years of community requests and the gap in the set, no existing whale or dolphin emoji captured the orca's instantly recognizable pattern.

Taxonomically, 🫍 is a lie. Orcas are the largest members of the dolphin family (Delphinidae), not whales. 'Killer whale' is a mistranslation of the Spanish 'ballena asesina' (whale killer), which referred to their ability to prey on whales, not their species. Culturally though, we treat them as a separate animal, and now Unicode agrees.

The emoji carries an unusually loaded set of associations. Pacific Northwest Indigenous nations (Coast Salish, Tlingit, Haida, Kwakiutl) treat orcas as sacred protectors. The Lummi Nation calls them 'qwe lhol mechen,' meaning 'people that live under the water.' Modern conservation and animal rights movements adopted the orca as their mascot after Blackfish (2013)) demolished SeaWorld's reputation. And since 2020, the Iberian orca boat-rammings have turned 🫍 into an ironic class-war meme.

🫍 anchors three distinct content lanes. First, pure marine-biology and conservation posts: orca pod sightings, Southern Resident orca updates, rescue footage, and educational threads about orca intelligence. These lean wholesome and informative.

Second, the 'orcas-as-class-warriors' meme. After the Iberian orca attacks started sinking yachts off Spain and Portugal in 2020 and went massively viral in 2023, left-leaning social media adopted 🫍 as shorthand for 'eat the rich.' Posts like 'orcas reading theory' and 'class-conscious whales' stayed in circulation for years. White Gladis, the orca researchers think started the behavior after a boat trauma, became folk hero.

Third, grief and emotional-depth content. Tahlequah (J35)), the Southern Resident orca who carried her dead calf for 17 days across 1,000 miles in 2018, became a global symbol of animal grief. She carried a second dead calf in early 2025. 🫍 appears in posts about animal mourning, mental health, and maternal bonds.

A fourth lane is emerging: the salmon hat trend. In 2024, Southern Resident orcas were photographed wearing dead salmon as hats, reviving a short-lived 1987 fad. Scientists honestly have no clear answer. 🫍 shows up in every 'orcas are back to being unhinged' tweet.

The orca was one of the most-requested missing animal emojis for years, campaigned for by marine biologists, Pacific Northwest Indigenous advocates, and Blackfish-era conservation groups. The formal proposal L2/24-249 landed in 2024 and cited the cultural depth of the orca, the endangered status of the Southern Resident population, and the gap in Unicode's cetacean coverage (baleen whales had 🐋, dolphins had 🐬, but the largest dolphin in the world was unrepresented).

The emoji was approved in Emoji 17.0 and began shipping on major platforms in late 2025 and early 2026. Apple, Google, and Samsung all went with similar side-profile designs featuring the tall dorsal fin and the recognizable eye-patch shape. The pattern is one of the most visually distinctive of any new animal emoji in years.

Cultural lineage, though, goes back millennia. Orcas appear on Tlingit totem poles, Coast Salish clan crests, Haida canoe prows, and Kwakiutl ceremonial masks from well before European contact. The Tlingit believe orcas act as protectors of humankind, and Kwakiutl tradition says the souls of marine hunters transform into orcas after death. Modern reintroductions of orca-focused environmental art in Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria have often been done in partnership with these nations.

The emoji's arrival also came in the wake of Blackfish (2013), which turned the global cultural script on SeaWorld and helped drive a change in public perception of orca captivity. SeaWorld ended orca breeding in 2016. Tokitae/Lolita), one of the most famous captive Southern Resident orcas, died at the Miami Seaquarium in August 2023, months before a planned move back to her natal waters in the Salish Sea.

1. 1987Southern Resident orcas invent the 'salmon hat' fad, carrying dead fish balanced on their heads. It fades within a year↗
2. 2013Blackfish premieres at Sundance, begins the SeaWorld cultural reckoning↗
3. 2016SeaWorld ends orca breeding. Granny (J2), the matriarch of the J pod and potentially the oldest known orca, is last seen and presumed dead↗
4. 2018Tahlequah (J35) carries her dead calf for 17 days across 1,000 miles, one of the most-photographed animal grief events ever recorded↗
5. 2020Iberian orcas begin ramming boats off Spain and Portugal↗
6. 2023Iberian orca meme goes mainstream; Tokitae/Lolita dies at the Miami Seaquarium weeks before a planned move to the Salish Sea↗
7. 2024Southern Resident orcas revive the salmon hat trend 37 years after its first appearance↗
8. 2024Orca emoji formally proposed to Unicode (L2/24-249)↗
9. 2025🫍 approved in Emoji 17.0, begins rolling out across major platforms↗
10. 2025Tahlequah is spotted carrying a second dead calf in early 2025↗

• •Orcas are the largest members of the dolphin family, not whales. 'Killer whale' is a mistranslation of the Spanish 'ballena asesina' (whale killer), referring to their ability to prey on other whales.
• •Tahlequah (J35), a Southern Resident orca, carried her dead calf for 17 days across 1,000 miles in 2018. She repeated the behavior with a second lost calf in early 2025, an extraordinary documented case of mammalian grief.
• •Orcas are one of only a handful of species with menopause. Females stop reproducing around 30-40 but can live into their 80s+, acting as matriarchs and ecological knowledge keepers. This is the 'grandmother hypothesis.'
• •Each orca pod has its own acoustic dialect, stable across up to six generations. Different pods use different calls even when their ranges overlap, a clear example of non-human culture.
• •Iberian orcas have interacted with over 500 boats since 2020, damaging many and sinking several. A matriarch nicknamed White Gladis, believed to have been hit by a boat, may have taught juveniles to target rudders. The behavior spread through the population.
• •In 1987, a female Southern Resident orca started wearing a dead salmon on her head. The 'salmon hat' fad spread to all three pods before fading within a year. It reappeared in October 2024, 37 years later, and scientists still don't fully understand it.
• •The Southern Resident orca population was listed as endangered in 2005 and numbers around 75 individuals. They depend almost entirely on Chinook salmon, and declining salmon runs are the primary threat.
• •Blackfish (2013)) caused SeaWorld attendance to drop by one million visitors and its share price to fall 33%. SeaWorld ended orca breeding in 2016, a decision directly tied to the film's cultural impact.
• •Tokitae/Lolita), the second-oldest orca in captivity, died at the Miami Seaquarium in August 2023, months before a planned release to a pen in the Salish Sea. She had been captured from her wild pod in 1970.
• •Granny (J2), the matriarch of the Southern Resident J pod, was originally estimated at 105 years old) at her 2016 disappearance. Later research revised that estimate to 65-80, but the pod effectively lost its oldest navigator when she died.

• •Blackfish (2013)), Gabriela Cowperthwaite's documentary about Tilikum and SeaWorld, one of the most consequential animal documentaries ever made.
• •Free Willy (1993) and its sequels, starring Keiko the orca). The real-world Free Willy campaign funded Keiko's eventual release in 2002. He struggled to rejoin wild orcas and died in Norway in 2003.
• •The Iberian orca 'uprising' meme (2020-present) reframed the boat-ramming story as class warfare. 'White Gladis' entered meme-history alongside the 2021 Suez Canal ship and the 2022 cat Larry from Downing Street.
• •Tahlequah's tour of grief (2018) and her 2025 repeat reshaped public understanding of animal emotion. She's one of the most-photographed single orcas in history.
• •Tokitae/Lolita)'s 2023 death at the Miami Seaquarium became a rallying moment for anti-captivity activism, with a planned (and ultimately unfinished) journey home to the Salish Sea.
• •The Salmon Hat Wikipedia page is itself a cultural artifact. An entry exists specifically for an animal fad with a less-than-two-year lifespan in 1987 that then randomly returned 37 years later.

• •Single codepoint: U+1FACDU+1FACD. No ZWJ sequence, no skin-tone support.
• •Emoji 17.0 (2025). Not yet universal across platforms, older iOS/Android/Windows may render as a tofu box. Test on target OS versions before shipping in critical UI.
• •For fallback, pair with descriptive text or alt text: 'orca 🫍' reads in assistive tech even if the glyph doesn't render.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.