Researchers document a humpback mother's days-long vigil over her stillborn calf

Scientists from Griffith University and the Sea World Foundation have recorded what appears to be grieving behavior in a baleen whale, a first for the species. Off Australia’s southern Gold Coast in 2025, a female humpback that had given birth to a presumed-dead calf stayed with the body for hours and possibly days, keeping close, maintaining eye contact, and positioning herself alongside it beneath the surface — actions the team reads as maternal attachment and postmortem attentiveness.

The finding matters because such death-related behavior had mostly been seen in toothed whales and dolphins, not filter-feeding species like humpbacks. Notably, this mother’s response differed from the classic pattern of toothed whales lifting dead calves to the surface; her attention played out underwater over a prolonged period. Lead researcher Olaf Meynecke frames it as evidence bearing on the emotional lives, social bonds, and cognitive capacities of large whales.

The authors stress these neonatal mortality events are rare and poorly documented, and call for systematic recording of future cases to understand the cognitive and evolutionary significance of the behavior. The case study appears in the journal Discover Animals (DOI: 10.1007/s44338-026-00232-9).