Footage recorded in July 2025 shows a humpback whale repeatedly returning for more than an hour to the spot where its stillborn calf lay, a kilometre off Australia’s Gold Coast.
While similar behaviours have been documented in pilot whales, dolphins and killer whales, a new report from Griffith University and the Sea World Foundation suggests this is the first described case of a toothless baleen whale mother caring for her deceased newborn calf.
‘However, we can’t directly measure the emotional state of whales,’ writes Olaf Meynecke, a co-author of the report. ‘The behaviours we observed could represent grief, but they could also reflect maternal attachment, confusion or instinctive caregiving. For this reason, researchers use broader terms – such as postmortem attentive behaviour – rather than concluding that whales grieve in the human sense.’
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