Humpback Whale Footage Shows A Mother Grieving Her Stillborn Calf In A First For The Species
New research published Wednesday in the journal Discover Animals has given the world its first detailed, scientifically documented look at grief behavior in humpback whales, and the footage is heartbreaking.
The video was captured off Palm Beach near Australia's Gold Coast last July by Andrew Mulville of the Sea World Foundation, who initially thought he was watching two whales resting at the surface.
What he was actually seeing was a female humpback whale accompanied by a companion, staying with the body of her stillborn calf on the seafloor approximately one kilometer offshore.
The mother repeatedly returned to the calf's body, resting beside it, maintaining eye contact and touching it gently with her head and fin. Researchers observed the behavior for more than an hour and believe she may have remained for several hours or possibly days.
Notably, she never attempted to lift the calf to the surface, which researchers believe suggests she may have understood the calf was dead shortly after birth.
"It's pretty heartbreaking to watch this female making continuous contact with the deceased calf," said lead researcher Olaf Meynecke of Griffith University's Whales and Climate Research Program. "To our knowledge, this is the first detailed, documented occurrence of this behaviour for this species." Meynecke compared the emotional responses to those documented in elephants and great apes, fellow highly social, cognitively complex mammals.
