{"id":231257,"date":"2026-01-06T23:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T23:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/231257\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T23:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T23:27:10","slug":"gender-of-pi-the-whale-identified-using-drone-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/231257\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender of Pi the whale identified using drone photo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caroline RobinsonSouth West<\/p>\n

\"BrendonBrendon White<\/p>\n

Jay Cowen said getting the photo at the right second was “one in a million”<\/p>\n

A humpback whale that has become a regular visitor to the Isles of Scilly has had a gender reveal but not the kind with brightly coloured pink and blue balloons. <\/p>\n

Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust said a local wildlife watcher managed to get photos clear enough for identification, and Jay Cowen from the trust said: “The chances of that are basically one in a million.”<\/p>\n

A local cetacean monitor analysed the images and confirmed Pi’s gender with global cetacean experts, as female.<\/p>\n

Jay Cowen from the trust said “Pi is a girl” and they were “really excited” as she may be of breeding age.<\/p>\n

The trust described it as “incredibly difficult” to get a high-enough quality photo of the underside of a whale to visually confirm their gender, and usually the presence or absence of a calf was a guide. <\/p>\n

Cowen said: “It’s actually, as you might expect, very difficult to figure out a whale’s gender. <\/p>\n

“Normally, you’d have to get quite close to them, either diving underneath them or waiting for them to flip upside down and take a photo at just the right second.<\/p>\n

“The chances of that are basically one in a million.”<\/p>\n

They said it was “incredibly lucky” that the local wildlife watcher was flying a photography drone and managed to take an image of Pi flipping on her back. <\/p>\n

“That photo, hopefully not too much to Pi’s embarrassment, has now been passed around an international group of cetacean experts,” Cowen said. <\/p>\n

After analysing the picture, experts agreed Pi was female.<\/p>\n

\"BrendonBrendon White<\/p>\n

Pi has been coming to the Isles of Scilly every year since 2020<\/p>\n

‘Little mini Pis’<\/p>\n

Pi got her name for a scar near the dorsal fin which is in the shape of the mathematical symbol Pi, according to Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust. <\/p>\n

It added Pi was the most reliably recurrent humpback whale recorded in the UK, having shown up in the Isles of Scilly every year since 2020. <\/p>\n

She has also been spotted around Penzance, Ireland and the Outer Hebrides.<\/p>\n

The trust said Pi was first spotted in UK water in 2019 and was not accompanied by a parent which would have made her at least one year old at the time. <\/p>\n

They said they believe Pi is now seven to eight years old, at least. <\/p>\n

Cowen added Pi being a female and her age was exciting because it meant “she’s about breeding age… maybe in the future we’re going to have some little mini Pis.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caroline RobinsonSouth West Brendon White Jay Cowen said getting the photo at the right second was “one in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-231257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}