The Profoundly Affecting Grief of Animals

"There's evidence that cetaceans such as dolphin and whales are often attending to dead bodies. Sometimes, it's because of curiosity or exploration and not necessarily emotion. Other mother dolphins and whales have kept their calves buoyant."
"What's different about J35 is her persistence. How resilient can she be? How long can she keep this up? Is she eating? Is she taking care of herself?"
Barbara King, professor emerita, anthropology, College of William and Mary

"There's an optic that's more powerful than any other statistic."
"It's a picture of what we can assume is a heartbroken mother who herself is necessary and precious to this population [of orcas]."
Jason Colby, professor, environmental history, University of Victoria

In this photo taken Tuesday, July 24, 2018, provided by the Center for Whale Research, a baby orca whale is being pushed by her mother after being born off the Canada coast near Victoria, British Columbia. (Michael Weiss/Center for Whale Research via AP)

Orcas have been listed for the past decade in both Canada and the United States as an endangered species. There is an alarming deficit of Chinook salmon comprising the black-and-white orcas' main diet. Other threats ranging from toxic contamination to disturbing noise and other troubling potential threats from boat traffic -- interfering with their foraging or communication -- that contribute to their threatened status.

Lacking the essential fat and energy required to ensure their health status lends itself to reproduction, female orcas have been seen to experience problems with pregnancy due to nutritional stressors that biologists link to a critical shortage of salmon. Last year, University of Washington and other researchers undertook a multi-year study that indicated two-third of the orcas' pregnancies have failed for the last seven years.

In mid-July, a 20-year-old whale tagged as J35 gave birth to an orca calf. The baby whale failed to survive, dying just days after its birth. Its grieving mother has since been seen clinging to her dead calf, off the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. Other members of her pod are travelling alongside the bereaved mother, helping her to keep her baby afloat. She quite obviously is not prepared to discard her dead calf.

The scientific community might have been elated at the birth, finally, of an orca calf, only to discover that promising sign was short-lived for a species moving along the endangered scale of existence. The mother orca appears to have been devastated by the loss of her baby, taking extraordinary measures to keep the calf afloat, while knowing it is dead.

She and the members of her family have been pushing the dead calf along, propping it up, swimming with it for miles upon end in the waters of Washington State and British Columbia. According to experts, grief at the loss of any pod member, much less a calf, is part of the species' mourning ritual; what is unusual, they say, is the lengths the orcas have gone to, to try to support the mother refusing to let her baby go.

Researchers at the Whale Museum on San Juan Island have collected fecal samples from the group in the interests of knowing more about the situation. They plan to attempt a recovery of the dead calf, in an effort to examine it to determine why it failed to thrive after birth. The situation is of high concern for the preservation of these killer whales since there is now a total of only 75 of the southern resident whales that typically spend spring to fall in Pacific Northwest waters.


In this photo taken Tuesday, July 24, 2018, provided by the Center for Whale Research, a baby orca whale is being pushed by her mother after being born off the Canada coast near Victoria, British Columbia. (Michael Weiss/Center for Whale Research via AP)