A humpback whale has been observed for the first time shortly after birthing a stillborn calf, showing apparent signs of grief similar to those seen in other large mammals such as elephants. The encounter began at around 8am on 17 July 2025, when Andrew Mulville at the Sea World Foundation, an Australian charity, was aboard a boat a kilometre offshore from the Gold Coast in Queensland. Orcas have begun wearing salmon hats again – and we may soon know why He noticed two adult whales milling in the same location, occasionally diving, vocalising and rolling on the surface.
By 8.30am, Mulville saw and recorded an amniotic membrane floating on the surface, indicating a birth had occurred but, concerningly, no blood or placenta was visible. He then placed a camera underwater and saw a stillborn calf, less than 4 metres long, that had sunk to the sandy seabed. The mother repeatedly approached the calf, looked at it eye to eye, and touched it with her head and pectoral fin.
While such behaviour has been recorded in toothed whales with dead calves, it is extremely rare in baleen whales such as humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae). With a live newborn, humpback mothers typically try to push the calf to the surface to help it breathe, but in this case she didn’t, perhaps suggesting she knew it wasn’t alive. Meanwhile, the second adult stayed nearby, apparently supporting both the mother and dead calf.
Although stillbirth in mammals is common, it is extremely rare to observe the event in whales, says Olaf Meynecke at Griffith University in Australia, who co-wrote a paper with Mulville on the observation. To his knowledge, it has never before been witnessed in humpback whales. On the next two days, members of the public on shore reported seeing the two adult whales in the same location.
The incident has raised concerns about why the calf was stillborn, especially because seven deceased humpback whale neonates and one deceased young whale of unconfirmed age were also observed in July 2025 in the same region. None of these appeared to be the stillborn whale observed by the scientists. The animals revealing why human culture isn’t as special as we thought Also, while it has become increasingly common for humpbacks to calve in southern Queensland as their population has grown, no one is sure why so many female whales are now giving birth hundreds of kilometres south of their traditional breeding grounds in the Great Barrier Reef.
It was also extremely unusual that the mother didn’t deliver her placenta, and this may have also placed her at risk, says Meynecke. Photos of her distinctive fluke have been uploaded to a database of 16,000 individuals, so the researchers hope she will be recognised if she re-appears in coming seasons. Rebecca Dunlop at the University of Queensland says descriptive case study reports such as this one “run the risk of anthropomorphising observed behaviours”.
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