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https://apnews.com/article/sperm-whale-birth-video-drone-ad85d8ad8454d7bd25807304699d3c74>
"NEW YORK (
AP) — Rare footage of a sperm whale giving birth has offered
scientists a window into the behavior of these large, elusive mammals.
The video taken in 2023 shows female whales from two family lines working
together to support the labor during critical moments and lift the newborn calf
above the water. It’s a level of coordination that’s extremely uncommon in the
animal kingdom, especially outside of primates like monkeys and humans.
“The group quite literally helps bring the calf into the world,” said Oregon
State University behavioral ecologist Mauricio Cantor in an email. He had no
role in the new research.
Scientists want to know how whales cooperate and socialize in the wild, but
it’s tough to study this in animals that spend most of their time underwater.
There are just a handful of sperm whale birth records from the past 60 years,
and all are anecdotal accounts or from whaling boats.
Several years ago, researchers were studying whale communication on a boat off
the Caribbean island of Dominica when they noticed something odd. Eleven whales
— most of them female — surfaced, their heads facing one another, and started
thrashing and diving above and below the water. The scientists immediately took
out drones and microphones to capture the event.
The full delivery took about 30 minutes. For hours afterward, pairs of whales
held the baby above the water until it was able to swim.
“This was just really a special event,” said study co-author David Gruber with
the Cetacean Translation Initiative, or Project CETI.
After observing the birth, the scientists created software to analyze exactly
what was going on. They chronicled the sights and sounds in two studies
published Thursday in the journals
Scientific Reports and
Science.
What struck the researchers was how many mother, sister and daughter whales
united to support the new calf, even ones that weren’t related. Sperm whales
live in close-knit, female-led societies, and the new observations show how
those dynamics persist in the animals’ most significant and vulnerable
moments."
Via Muse.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
