@c5news: A grieving dolphin mother has been captured carrying her dead calf for several days in recently released drone footage. Fraggle has lost her last four calves, Geographe Marine Research, who captured the footage in western Australia, said. “Knowing that having a calf in winter was going to be a challenge for survival we still had hope she had a chance to be a mum again,” the charity wrote in a social media post, adding that they had witnessed a high respiratory rate in the calf recently, so, “sadly we knew this day was coming”. The footage shows Fraggle carrying her young – said to have died at two weeks old - on her rostrum, a pod supporting her in a make-shift funeral procession. The sad scene was spotted in Leschenault Estuary, near Bunbury, late last week. According to reports, Fraggle was accompanied by two dolphins that live in the estuary and others normally found in coastal waters. “With only a handful of dolphins that call the estuary home we don't get to witness newborns most years and even then, the survival rate is low. This day it seems some of her ocean-going friends joined the locals to mourn alongside her showing the tight family bond they have,” Geographe Marine Research wrote. Dolphin mothers can carry their dead calves for several days, repeatedly lifting or pushing them to the surface. The behaviour can prevent the mother from feeding normally, which eventually leads to her discarding her young. Scientists refer to the carrying, or guarding of the dead, by dolphins as “postmortem attentive behaviour”. A 2018 study examining 78 recorded cases among cetaceans found that dolphins accounted for more than 92% of observations. The behaviour, researchers said, could represent attempts to rescue an unresponsive calf, or be a response to grief.

Channel 5 News

Open In TikTok:

Region: GB

Tuesday 04 August 2026 13:30:00 GMT