Просмотр новости
Найдите то, что Вас интересует
Спутники
РН
SpaceX
Роскосмос
NASA
СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASAThe footage shows other sperm whales huddled around the mother, helping lift the newborn calf to the surface until it’s ready to swim.
It takes a village to deliver a whale calf. That’s what the most detailed video ever of a sperm whale birth shows.
In the footage, a female whale in labor is surrounded by others assisting her. Almost all of her helpers are female. But not all are related to the birthing mom. This shows that sperm whales benefit from cooperation, just as humans do.
Because getting to watch the birth of a whale is extremely rare, only a few scientific studies have described them. Some of those reports have noted other whales helping the mom through the birthing process. But scientists had never caught this on video.
In 2023, David Gruber was part of a team that got very lucky. Gruber is a marine biologist. He works with Project CETI, a nonprofit dedicated to sperm whale research. Project CETI is partly based on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean Sea. Gruber was in a boat right off the coast when his team caught the birth.
The researchers weren’t looking for a whale birth. They just happened to be in the right place, at the right time — with the right equipment. Using two drones, the team caught the whole 34-minute birthing process on tape.
A group of 10 whales surrounded the laboring mom. After the birth, her assistants took turns lifting the newborn to the surface for hours. This allowed the calf to breathe air until it could swim on its own.
The whales seemed to include the scientists in this event, Gruber says. “They literally carried the baby right past the front of our boat.” His group shared its video in Science on March 26.
Newborn sperm whales risk sinking in the first few hours after they are born. In this video of a sperm whale birth, adult females form a raft to help a newborn float. It’s the first video of sperm whale birth captured by scientists.Project CETI Helping hands — or finsProject CETI has been studying sperm whales around Dominica for long enough that Gruber and his colleagues could identify every individual in the video. “Not only did we capture such an amazing dataset, but we actually knew each of these whales,” he says.
Computers tracked each whale’s position in the footage. Then, a team member labeled each animal. A whale named Rounder was giving birth, the researchers determined. They also figured out what each of the other 10 whales did and how they were related to the mom.
Rounder’s helpers included whales from two different female lines. These are like whale families, also called kin groups. The kin groups’ teamwork was surprising, because these groups don’t usually spend time together searching for food. But whales from the two groups fully mixed for hours after the birth. All helped lift the newborn calf at some point.
The four whales that helped hold the calf the most were its mother, aunt, an older kin member and one whale from outside the calf’s kin group. Holding the baby up is very important, because it can’t float on its own yet. Without help, Gruber says, “it would have sunk.”
Killer whales, belugas and other cetaceans have also been seen pushing newborns to the surface. This behavior may go back to when those species shared a common ancestor, Gruber says.
Baby sperm whale plays with a plastic bag it’s found (held by its fin). It shows the animal’s curiosity, but also highlights the risk (of ingestion or entanglement) that plastic wastes hold for marine animals. Stanislav Stelmakhovich/ Creatas Video+/Getty Images Plus The wails of laborAlong with the video, the researchers also recorded audio of the birth. They analyzed these sounds with help from some other researchers.
Sperm whales make sounds called codas. The scientists looked for changes in things like the codas’ rhythm. Those codas changed during important moments in the birth. One specific coda was heard more frequently during the birth. The team reported its findings March 26 in Scientific Reports.
Different sounds being linked with the birth is not surprising, says Denise Herzing. She’s a marine biologist who heads the Wild Dolphin Project. Based in Jupiter, Fla., this nonprofit focuses on Atlantic spotted dolphins.
“Marine mammals, in general, have specific sounds during specific behavioral contexts,” says Herzing.
After the birth, the sperm whales also ran into several pilot whales. Now, the sperm whales’ vocal style changed more. That might be because pilot whales sometimes bother sperm whales.
It takes a villageGiving birth is one of the most critical moments of a female whale’s life. Such high stakes might have driven these mammals to evolve cooperative instincts, the researchers say.
This is spot on, Herzing says. “We see different alliances of dolphins grouping into bigger groups to fight off a predator or to mate.”
Sharing the birth with the world took cooperation from the human team, too. Many scientists had to work together to film the video, analyze it and map the relationships between the whales. “It was a very profound experience for all of us,” says Gruber.
ancestor: A predecessor. It could be a family forebear, such as a parent, grandparent or great-great-great grandparent. Or it could be a species, genus, family or other order of organisms from which some later one evolved. For instance, ancient dinosaurs are the ancestors of today's birds. (antonym: descendant)
Atlantic: One of the world’s five oceans, it is second in size only to the Pacific. It separates Europe and Africa to the east from North and South America to the west.
audio: Having to do with sound.
behavior: The way something (often a person or other organism) conducts itself or acts towards others.
calf: (plural: calves) The name of young animals in a range of mammalian species, from cattle to walruses.
Caribbean: The name of a sea that runs from the Atlantic Ocean in the East to Mexico and Central American nations in the West, and from the southern coasts of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico down to the northern coasts of Venezuela and Brazil. The term is also used to refer to the culture of nations that border on or are islands in the sea.
cetaceans: The order of marine mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. The baleen whales ( Mysticetes ) filter their food from the water with big baleen plates. The remaining cetaceans ( Odontoceti ) include some 70 species of toothed animals that include beluga whales, narwhals, killer whales (a type of dolphin) and porpoises.
common ancestor: Also known as shared ancestor. It's an ancestor that two or more descendants have in common. Two siblings share a parent as a common ancestor. This also applies on the level of species and groups of organisms. Two or more species can share a common ancestor at the genus level. Two or more genera can share a common ancestor at the family level, and so on. Tigers and lions have a common ancestor, as do humans and Neandertals.
dolphins: A highly intelligent group of marine mammals that belong to the toothed-whale family. Members of this group include orcas (killer whales), pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins.
drone: A remote-controlled, pilotless aircraft or missile.
evolve: (adj. evolving) To change gradually over generations, or a long period of time. In living organisms, such an evolution usually involves random changes to genes that will then be passed along to an individual’s offspring. These can lead to new traits, such as altered coloration, new susceptibility to disease or protection from it, or different shaped features (such as legs, antennae, toes or internal organs).
footage: (in movies and videos) A term for the uncut or unprocessed motion pictures or video imagery taken by a camera. It takes its name from the fact that it took several feet of film to capture a few seconds of motion-picture photography.
killer whale: A dolphin species (Orcinus orca) whose name means whale killer. These animals belong to the order of marine mammals known as Cetacea (or cetaceans).
kin: Family or relatives (sometimes even distant ones).
literally: An adjective indicating that the phrase it modifies is precisely true. For instance, to say: "It's so cold that I'm literally dying," means that this person actually expects to soon be dead, the result of getting too cold.
mammal: An animal distinguished by possessing hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the feeding of their young, and (typically) the bearing of live young. They also are warm-blooded (or endothermic).
marine biologist: A scientist who studies creatures that live in ocean water, from bacteria and shellfish to kelp and whales.
marine mammal: Any of many types of mammals that spend most of its life in the ocean environment. These include whales and dolphins, walruses and sea lions, seals and sea otters, manatees and dugongs — even polar bears.
predator: (adjective: predatory) A creature that preys on other animals for most or all of its food.
profound: The quality of being great in magnitude or very intense. Or it can describe a person who is insightful and/or has great knowledge.
sea: An ocean (or region that is part of an ocean). Unlike lakes and streams, seawater — or ocean water — is salty.
species: A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.
sperm whale: A species of enormous whale with small eyes and a small jaw in a squarish head that takes up 40 percent of its body. Their bodies can span 13 to 18 meters (43 to 60 feet), with adult males being at the bigger end of that range. These are the deepest diving of marine mammals, reaching depths of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) or more. They can stay below the water for up to an hour at a time in search of food, mostly giant squids.
whale: A common, but fairly imprecise, term for a class of large mammals that lives in the ocean. This group includes dolphins and porpoises.
About Lily Burton
Lily Burton was the Spring 2026 science writing intern at Science News. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cell Biology and Anthropology from UC Berkeley. She also has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the University of Chicago where she researched circadian rhythms in photosynthetic bacteria and the role they play in metabolism. She was a 2024 AAAS Mass Media Fellow where she reported on local science at WUNC – North Carolina Public Radio.