Dolphins might be considered highly intelligent, but this sea creature wasn’t thinking when he tried to swallow a 4.6-pound octopus whole.
The bottlenose’s dinner proved fatal when its tentacles blocked its airways, a post mortem found.
The Indo-Pacific mammal – known as Gilligan to marine biologists in the area – was found dead on a beach near Perth in Australia in 2015.
A harrowing picture shows octopus arms hanging out of the side of its mouth.
But scientists only recently released details of how it died. The findings were published in Marine Mammal Science.
In a grim retelling of its final moments, scientists found one tentacle stretching down the dolphin’s esophagus, and the other seven stuck in the back of its throat.
Tentacle suckers were gripping the throat walls and had blocked off Gilligan’s airway, causing the dolphin to suffocate.
They belonged to a Maori Octopus – the largest found in Australia.
Dolphins usually eat fish, but if they do plump for something exotic like the Maori, they are known to break them up into smaller pieces using a “shake and toss” method.