Humpback Whale Caught on Camera Grieving Its Stillborn Calf
Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented
A documented case of a humpback whale mourning a stillborn calf, reported by phys.org and discussed on Hacker News. Commenters note that orcas have also been observed carrying their dead calves, and one parent describes the scene as heartbreaking.
Any parent here who has known this loss can relate. Didn't think I'd see this on HN but yeah this is heartbreaking.
- imjonse
Unsurprisingly, mammals (not just humans) also fear death and are very distressed when being lead to slaughter and seeing their peers go down before them.
- antoni4040
I come here to read about the impending AI apocalypse, not feel feelings.
- seri4l
Paper [0]
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44338-026-00232-9
- georgemcbay
Blows my mind that so many people just have this hardened internalized idea that we're somehow significantly different than any other animal.
Sure, we've got them beat on language and planning, but we're currently in the process of being passed up on both those fronts by multi-dimensional arrays of floating point numbers sitting inside of sand. So, like, how special is that then, really?
- gigatexal
Any parent here who has known this loss can relate. Didn’t think I’d see this on HN but yeah this is heartbreaking.
- zer00eyz
Orcas have also been seen to carry their dead calf's around.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/southern-reside...
- jibal
> indicated an inherent, strong maternal attachment to the calf
Yeah, that's not grieving.
- SapporoChris
"She remained with it for several hours and possibly even days."
Interesting article, but that comment veers into speculation. Speculation diminishes the value of a scientific article.