Do Whales Grieve? New Footage Shows a Humpback Mother with Her Stillborn Calf

It was a heartbreaking scene that unfolded just a kilometre off the Gold Coast last July. A newborn humpback whale lay limp on the seafloor, its tiny body unmoving, while its mother lingered above, gently nudging the calf with her head and pectoral fin.

For more than an hour the mother swam back to the same spot again and again, hovering, touching, and even resting eye‑to‑eye with the lifeless infant. A second adult – likely a companion – hung around the pair, but it was the mother’s repeated, almost tender gestures that caught the scientists’ attention.

Researchers call this kind of response “epimeletic behaviour” – a word that sounds clinical but, in plain English, means caring for a distressed companion. It’s something we’ve seen before in dolphins, killer whales and even pilot whales, but documentation of it in baleen whales, like humpbacks, has been virtually non‑existent.

Why is that? When a baleen whale calf dies, the body usually sinks quickly, making it hard to spot. So when the team from the University of Queensland happened upon this scene, it felt a bit like stumbling on a secret.

The video showed the calf, still wrapped in a thin amniotic membrane, lying motionless. The mother, instead of trying to lift the youngster to the surface – a common post‑birth move – simply stayed close, gently tapping it as if checking for a pulse. She didn’t join the rest of the pod, didn’t resume her usual feeding dives, and seemed almost fixated on the tiny body beneath her.

Such behaviour raises a big, uncomfortable question: are whales capable of grief? Elephants, great apes and some toothed whales have been observed mourning dead relatives, staying nearby for days, even touching bones. In the case of killer whales, a mother once carried a dead calf for 17 days, covering more than 1,500 kilometres. Those long‑lasting attachments point to deep maternal bonds.

But we have to be careful not to project human emotions onto another species. The mother’s actions could simply be an instinctive response – a hormonal drive to care for offspring that doesn’t switch off instantly after death. It could also be confusion, a lack of a clear cue that the calf is gone, or just a strong attachment that makes her linger.

Because we can’t ask a whale how she feels, scientists prefer a more neutral label: “post‑mortem attentive behaviour.” Still, the fact that a humpback would stay put, for hours, with a dead calf suggests something more than just routine.

Humpback whales are famous for their massive migrations and spectacular breaches, yet they’re equally social. They’ll guard calves from orcas, circle injured mates, and even intervene when predators attack seals. Those protective instincts underscore the tight-knit nature of whale societies.

Unfortunately, not every calf survives. Disease, pollutants, or a mother’s low fat reserves can all lead to stillbirths. The loss is a reminder that the ocean, while vast, holds many hidden challenges for its biggest residents.

This incident is, to the best of our knowledge, the first rigorously documented case of a baleen whale mother attending to a deceased newborn. It opens a small window onto how humpbacks—and perhaps other large whales—deal with death.

As whale populations rebound and underwater technology improves, researchers hope to capture more of these elusive moments. Each new glimpse helps us understand not just the biology but the possible emotional lives of these majestic mammals.

So, do whales grieve? We can’t answer definitively, but the evidence suggests they experience a form of post‑birth attachment that can persist even after loss. Whether that’s grief in the human sense or something uniquely cetacean remains a mystery worth exploring.