Photo: Gabriel Barathieu/Wikimedia.
This is a picture of a mother and baby sperm whale off the coast of Mauritius. For some rare video footage showing the birth of a sperm whale calf near Dominica in the Caribbean, click at the Guardian, here.
Scientists made an exciting discovery in 2023 about how whales deal with the birthing process. Even more exciting, it was all captured on video. The pod of whales was well known to the researchers, who knew how they were related and had given them all names.
The article from from Agence France-Press was shared by Guardian.
“Scientists have managed to film a sperm whale giving birth while other female whales worked together to support the mother and her newborn. A team from Project Ceti, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, was in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on 8 July 2023.
“A 19-year-old female named Rounder was surrounded by family members and others as she was about to give birth to her second calf.
“Over nearly five and a half hours, the scientists documented the group’s behavior, watching them from the boat, filming them with drones and recording the sounds underneath the waves. The data they collected, which was published [in March] in the journals Scientific Reports and Science, represents an exceptional rarity in the history of science.
“Out of 93 species of cetaceans – a group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises – only nine have ever been observed giving birth in the wild. Rarer still was that whales not related to the mother were helping out.
“The Project Ceti team member Shane Gero told the New Scientist: “This is the first evidence of birth assistance in non-primates. It is fascinating to see the intergenerational support from the grandmother to her labouring daughter, and the support from the other, unrelated females.”
“The birth lasted 34 minutes, from their tails emerging from the water to the calf being born. During labor, other adult females dived under Rounder’s dorsal fin. …
“Immediately after the birth, the pod’s behavior ‘rapidly changed’ as every member became active, according to the study in Scientific Reports. All the adults were ‘squeezing the newborn’s body between theirs, touching it with their heads,’ the researchers wrote. The whales pointed their noses towards the newborn, ‘pushing it around, under the water, and on to and across their bodies above the surface.’ …
“Whale calves are born tail-first, rather than head-first like other mammals. However, while newborn sperm whales become talented swimmers within a few hours, they still sink right after birth. So other whales have to lift the calf up ‘to prevent the newborn from sinking while also facilitating its first breaths,’ the researchers suggested. Primates – including humans – are the only other mammals known to help assist each other out during birth.
“The scientists also recorded the whales making many sounds, including significant changes in ‘vocal style’ during significant events, the study said. … The changes in vocalization suggested that the group was coordinating to support the birth – or protect the newborn, the researchers said. …
“As they grow, the young become the center of their pod’s social unit, with others helping out with babysitting while the mother searches for food.
“After the birth was filmed in 2023, the pod was not spotted again for more than a year. Then the newborn was spotted with Accra and Aurora – the other young members of the pod – on 25 July last year. Surviving its first year was a good sign that the sperm whale would reach adulthood, the Project Ceti team said.
More at the Guardian, here. No paywall.
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