Olaf Meynecke described an underwater video off Australia’s Gold Coast showing a humpback whale mother staying with her stillborn calf for more than an hour. The calf lay motionless on the seafloor just a kilometre offshore last July while the mother kept returning, touching it and resting beside it eye-to-eye.
He wrote that the behaviours observed could represent grief, but they could also reflect maternal attachment, confusion or instinctive caregiving. That reading sits at the center of the case because researchers have rarely documented this kind of post-death maternal behaviour in baleen whales.
Gold Coast footage
The encounter lasted for more than an hour, and the two whales stayed in the same area for several hours. The mother gently touched the calf with her head and pectoral fin, then circled back to the same spot instead of leaving it behind. Meynecke described the case as the first described case of a humpback whale mother caring for her deceased newborn calf.
The footage adds a rare observation to a field that has mostly relied on stranded animals or distant sightings. Dead newborn baleen whales often sink quickly, which makes this kind of behavior difficult to document in the wild. That scarcity helps explain why the Gold Coast recording stands out.
Tahlequah comparison
Scientists have seen similar post-death behavior more often in toothed whales. Killer whale mothers have repeatedly been observed carrying their dead calves for hours, days and, in exceptional cases, weeks. Tahlequah carried her dead calf for 17 days over more than 1,500 kilometres in 2018.
The Gold Coast case differs because it involves a humpback whale, a baleen whale, not a toothed whale. Researchers have also observed humpback whales remaining alongside whales that are injured or entangled in nets, but the documented pattern around a dead newborn is far thinner.
Meynecke and the calf
Humpback whale mothers give birth after almost a year of pregnancy, then spend the next few months feeding the calf with nutrient-rich milk. Right after delivery, they often lift the calf to the surface to help it take its first breath. During the first months of its life, the calf depends entirely on its mother for nourishment, protection and guidance during migration.
Some calves do not survive because of disease, pollutants or a mother’s lack of fat reserves. In this case, the recorded behavior does not resolve what the mother understood about the calf’s death, but it does show a prolonged response that scientists can now compare with better-known cases in other whales. The footage keeps the debate focused on whether the mother was grieving or following another maternal impulse.
