04/08/2026
A mother dolphin in Western Australia’s Leschenault Estuary has spent days carrying her dead calf through the water, in what researchers describe as a period of mourning.
The calf was around two weeks old when it died. According to researchers at the Geographe Marine Research Ltd, the Australian conservation organisation that monitors the estuary, the mother, named Fraggle, has now lost her last four calves.
“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,” they wrote on Instagram.
“Late last week we found dolphin Fraggle mourning the loss of her calf,” they said. The group had been monitoring the calf’s health closely and said they “knew this day was coming” after noticing a high respiratory rate in the days before.
Scientists have long noticed that dolphins don’t let go easily. A mother will often keep her dead calf close for days, sometimes over a week, even as the body begins to decompose. Marine biologist Giovanni Bearzi, who has studied this behaviour across dozens of recorded cases, says it’s most likely tied to how strong the mother-calf bond is, and possibly to grief itself, though scientists are still working out whether it’s genuine mourning or an inability to accept the loss. What is clear is that this response is far more common in dolphins than in most other whales, and researchers have linked it to their unusually large, socially wired brains.
“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,” the researchers said. “This day it seems some of her ocean going friends joined the locals to mourn alongside her showing the tight family bond they have.”
Video credit: Geographe Marine Research
