Sperm Whales Orchestrate Cooperative Birth, Keeping Calf Afloat as a Tight-Knit Group
TL;DR
Field observers off Dominica in July 2023 captured an 11-whale group from two matrilines coordinating a calf’s birth and postnatal care, with a core quartet lifting and maintaining the newborn at the surface for breathing while the wider group stayed cohesive; the study, aided by machine learning and computer vision to track individuals, provides rare quantitative evidence of allocare and complex sociality in sperm whales and was published in Science Advances.
- Incredible Video Shows Sperm Whales Come Together to Birth a Calf ScienceAlert
- Scientists Filmed a Whale Birth. The Surprise: Mom Had Many Helpers. The New York Times
- Scientists recorded a sperm whale birth up close for the first time. They discovered something extraordinary. National Geographic
- The Astonishing Lessons of a Sperm-Whale Birth The New Yorker
- Out at sea, a Canadian whale scientist witnessed something close to a miracle The Globe and Mail
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