Dr Olaf Meynecke, who leads the research program at Griffith University, explained that post-mortem attentive behaviour in cetaceans has been documented predominantly among toothed whales and delphinids, the group known scientifically as odontocetes. Among these species, including dolphins, orcas and sperm whales, mothers have repeatedly been seen lifting dead calves toward the surface, sometimes in what observers describe as prolonged attempts to keep them breathing. By contrast, equivalent records for baleen whales, or mysticetes, the group that includes humpbacks, blue whales and fin whales, have remained largely absent from the published scientific literature. That gap has made the Australian observation particularly significant, because it suggests that the emotional and cognitive capacities underlying death-related responses may extend across both major branches of the cetacean family tree rather than being confined to the smaller, more socially studied odontocetes.

What distinguished this case from the familiar toothed whale accounts was the nature of the mother’s behaviour. Rather than lifting the calf to the surface, the humpback mother showed prolonged post-mortem behaviour and attention toward her deceased calf beneath the water. According to Dr Meynecke, she remained close to the calf, maintaining eye contact and positioning herself next to it over several hours and possibly even days. The research team noted that these observed behaviours were consistent with care-giving or nurturing actions and post-mortem attentive responses that have been documented in other socially complex mammals, and they indicated a strong, inherent maternal attachment to the calf. Such sustained proximity to a dead neonate carries no obvious survival benefit, which is precisely why scientists consider it a candidate for grief-like behaviour rather than simple biological reflex.

The encounter itself was witnessed at sea by Andrew Mulville, a rescue boat captain with the Sea World Foundation, whose account helped ground the scientific interpretation in direct observation. He described his initial impression as one of two whales simply resting at the surface, a common sight during the annual humpback migration along Australia’s east coast. Only after watching for some time did he realise that something unusual was unfolding. He recalled being totally surprised once he worked out what was happening, noting that the animals’ behaviour was unusual and definitely not what he had been expecting to see out at sea that day. His video footage, recorded in 2025 off the southern Queensland coast, shows the mother returning to the seafloor where her stillborn calf lay, providing the visual evidence that underpins the published case study.

Humpback whales undertake one of the longest migrations of any mammal, travelling thousands of kilometres between productive polar feeding grounds and warm tropical breeding waters. Calves are typically born in the sheltered coastal waters of eastern Australia during the winter migration season, and the period immediately surrounding birth is one of the most vulnerable in a whale’s life. Stillbirths and neonatal deaths occur in the population, but they are rarely observed directly, because dead calves sink quickly and mothers generally do not linger in ways that attract human attention. The fact that this mother remained at the site, returning repeatedly to the calf on the seafloor, made the event visible and documentable, transforming a private moment of loss into a scientific record that can now inform broader questions about cetacean cognition and emotion.

The study, titled First documentation of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) post-mortem attendance of a still born, adds to a small but growing body of evidence that death-related responses are not unique to humans or even to the great apes and elephants with which they are most often associated. In socially complex mammals, post-mortem attendance is thought to reflect the strength of maternal bonds and the cognitive machinery that supports them, including recognition of individuals, attachment, and the capacity to register that something has changed in a dependent offspring. Dr Meynecke emphasised that understanding how non-human animals respond to death provides insight into their emotional lives, social bonds, and cognitive capacities, framing the observation not merely as a poignant anecdote but as a data point in the comparative study of animal minds.

For the researchers, the emotional weight of the encounter was inseparable from its scientific value. Dr Meynecke acknowledged that observations of deceased calves, including the 2025 case, are incredibly sad, but stressed that they are also rare and add to the limited current understanding of the cognitive and emotional dimensions of death-related responses in baleen cetaceans. Because each documented event is so uncommon, every new record carries disproportionate weight in the literature. A single well-documented case cannot by itself establish that humpback whales experience grief in the way humans understand it, but it does establish that the behavioural raw material for such interpretations, prolonged attendance, close positioning, and sustained visual attention to a dead offspring, exists in a species where it had not previously been systematically recorded.

The case also highlights the practical role that trained observers and coastal response teams play in modern whale science. Along the Australian east coast, organisations such as the Sea World Foundation respond to whale entanglements, strandings and other marine emergencies, placing their crews in a position to witness events that research vessels would rarely encounter. Captain Mulville’s footage and observations were central to the study, illustrating how collaboration between academic institutions and frontline marine response organisations can convert chance encounters into peer-reviewed evidence. As whale populations along the east coast continue to recover from historical whaling, interactions between migrating whales and coastal observers are increasing, creating more opportunities for rare behaviours to be seen, recorded and verified.

Looking forward, Dr Meynecke argued that the case study underscores the need for continued systematic documentation of rare neonatal mortality events in large whales. Only by accumulating a body of standardised observations, he noted, can researchers begin to assess the cognitive, emotional, and evolutionary significance of post-mortem behaviour in baleen whales and compare it meaningfully with the richer records available for toothed species. The evolutionary stakes are considerable: if maternal attendance of dead young is widespread across cetaceans, it may represent an ancient mammalian inheritance tied to the biology of prolonged parental care, rather than a trait that emerged independently in smaller-brained odontocetes. For now, the image of a humpback mother holding vigil beside her stillborn calf on the Queensland seafloor stands as both a sobering reminder of the costs of migration and reproduction in the ocean’s giants, and a compelling invitation to keep watching, recording and questioning what whales feel when they lose their young.

Subject of Research: Post-mortem attendance behaviour of a humpback whale mother toward her stillborn calf

Article Title: Weeping whales: stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

Article References: Weeping whales: stillborn humpback whale grieving documented. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: humpback whale, grief, post-mortem behaviour, baleen whales, cetacean cognition, maternal attachment, stillbirth, Griffith University, Sea World Foundation, Discover Animals, animal emotion, whale migration

The encounter unfolded on the morning of 17 July 2025 at Palm Beach reef, roughly one kilometre from shore. Researchers aboard a small private vessel spotted two adult humpback whales, each approximately 12 to 13 metres long, milling slowly at the surface. The larger individual, presumed to be the mother, rested in a characteristic posture, arching her back before short dives of less than two minutes, each time resurfacing almost exactly where she had submerged. There were no signs of aggression, chasing or directed travel, only an unusual, deliberate stillness.

Underwater footage recorded with a handheld camera added a remarkable layer of detail. At about 08:30, the amniotic membrane was released and drifted at the surface, indicating that the birth had occurred only minutes earlier. By 08:45, the camera revealed a small calf, estimated at under four metres and possibly undersized, lying motionless on the sandy seafloor with no visible signs of movement or respiration. The mother approached alongside her stillborn, nudging it with her head and pectoral fin, and at times rested motionless, eye to eye with the tiny body, for at least a minute at a stretch. These behaviours continued until the observers left the site at 10:00.

What happened next deepened the mystery. On the following two days, land-based surveys from Burleigh Heads and reports from members of the public placed two adult humpback whales in the same area, suggesting that attendance may have continued for days. A fluke photograph of the female uploaded to the Happy Whale photo-identification platform produced no matches, hinting that she may have been a young adult on her first recorded appearance in these waters. Vocalisations were detected during the observation, although it could not be determined whether the mother, her escort, or both were calling.

Post-mortem attentive behaviour, sometimes framed as grieving, is well documented in toothed whales such as dolphins and killer whales. Dolphins have been seen supporting dead calves at the surface for hours, and in one of the most famous cases in marine biology, the southern resident killer whale known as Tahlequah carried her dead calf for 17 days over more than 1,500 kilometres in 2018. A systematic review of 106 cases of death-related behaviour in aquatic mammals concluded that odontocetes with long maternal investment exhibit such responses far more frequently than baleen whales, and dolphins alone account for more than 90 percent of reported incidents.

The near absence of comparable records in baleen whales has long puzzled scientists, and the new study argues that this gap may owe as much to physics and observation bias as to genuine behavioural differences. Unlike odontocete neonates, which typically float, newborn mysticetes have little blubber and tend to sink soon after death, removing the very opportunity for mothers to lift or carry the body. Births are also rarely witnessed, and placental material is seldom detected. When a dead calf drops quickly to the seafloor, prolonged attendance simply becomes invisible to science.

Strikingly, the Gold Coast mother made no attempt to raise the stillborn to the surface, a behaviour that would have been instinctive for a living newborn. The researchers suggest she may have recognised quickly that the calf was dead, or that the calf’s position on the seafloor made lifting impractical. The behaviours she did display, including circling, repeated approach, tactile contact and prolonged attendance, closely match the epimeletic, or caregiving, responses described across socially complex mammals from elephants to primates, and align with attentive behaviour humpback whales have shown toward entangled or injured conspecifics.

Interpreting such actions as grief remains scientifically delicate. Without physiological or neurological measurements from wild animals, researchers cannot distinguish emotional distress from maternal attachment, confusion or instinctive caregiving. Yet humpback whales possess spindle neurons, specialised brain cells also found in elephants and great apes that are associated with social awareness and emotional processing, and they show fierce maternal investment, including defending calves against killer whale attacks. The authors note that so-called fight species of baleen whales, including humpbacks, right whales and gray whales, may be particularly reluctant to abandon dead offspring.

The event also carries ecological significance. It occurred more than 500 kilometres south of this population’s main breeding grounds in the southern Great Barrier Reef, in water of about 20.5 degrees Celsius, near the lower temperature range documented for humpback births. In July 2025 alone, researchers compiled reports of seven deceased humpback neonates and one floating young whale between K’gari Island and Ballina, echoing a cluster of at least six calf deaths near K’gari in June 2023. The drivers remain unknown but may be linked to fluctuations in Antarctic krill availability, which influence the reproductive condition of migrating females.

Whether the southward shift in birthing reflects a growing population, adaptation to changing food supplies, or both is still debated. What the case makes unmistakably clear, the researchers argue, is that post-mortem attentive behaviour in baleen whales is likely far more common than the scientific record suggests, and that only sustained, systematic documentation of these fleeting and heartbreaking moments will reveal the cognitive, emotional and evolutionary depth of how the ocean’s giants respond to death.

Subject of Research: First documentation of post-mortem attendance behaviour by a female humpback whale toward her stillborn calf

Article Title: First documentation of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) post-mortem attendance of a stillborn

Article References: Meynecke, J.-O., & Mulville, A. (2026). First documentation of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) post-mortem attendance of a stillborn. Discover Animals, 3(1), Article 88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44338-026-00232-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44338-026-00232-9

Keywords: humpback whale, post-mortem attentive behaviour, epimeletic behaviour, animal grief, baleen whales, calf mortality, Megaptera novaeangliae, Gold Coast Australia, marine mammal behaviour, animal cognition, whale migration, maternal investment