Dolphins mourn for their dead

WHALES and grieve for their dead.

Like elephants, which are known to “cry” for their lost relatives, the aquatic mammals stay with their calves up to a week after they die.

Whales and dolphins have been seen carrying the dead bodies in their mouths, nudging them through the water and trying to keep them afloat.

Research at OceanCare in Switzerland concluded that some species of whales and dolphins are so attached to their babies that, like us, they have difficulty “letting go”.

The team analysed the behaviour of cetaceans based on almost 50 years of studies and found that “several species of cetaceans have been long known to care for, attend to, be aroused by, or show interest in dead or dying individuals”.

Among the 88 living types of cetacean, 20 have been seen to attend to their dead, with dolphins the most likely to do so, followed by narwhal and beluga whales.

In David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II, a pilot whale was filmed carrying her dead calf for days on end after it was apparently poisoned by plastic contamination in her milk. dolphins