{"id":730971,"date":"2026-08-08T00:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/730971\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:54:12","slug":"researchers-explain-dolphins-11-day-funeral-for-dead-calf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/730971\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers explain dolphin’s 11 day ‘funeral’ for dead calf"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a scene akin to a funeral procession, a pod of dolphins surrounds a grieving mother as it nudges along its deceased calf through a picturesque estuary at the bottom end of Western Australia.<\/p>\n

The footage was captured by the non-profit conservation group Geographe Marine Research and was initially shared to create awareness of the situation for the coastal community of Bunbury.<\/p>\n

It has since attracted thousands of responses from people struck by the seemingly human display of emotion.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

The dolphin mother, Fraggle, tried to balance the dead calf on its back as other dolphins joined it in an 11-day “funeral”. (Supplied: Geographe Marine Research)<\/p>\n

Geographe Marine Research’s Rodney Peterson was behind the drone footage widely shared online, which the organisation uses to monitor the region’s frequent marine visitors.<\/p>\n

He and the non-profit’s head researcher, Capri Jolliffe, said they see dolphins mourning every year.<\/p>\n

Do dolphins actually grieve?<\/p>\n

The term epimeletic is used by experts to describe animal behaviours like those displayed by Fraggle, the dolphin mother attempting to balance its dead two-week-old calf on her back.<\/p>\n

According to Ms Jolliffe the term also extends to acts of caregiving towards sick, injured or dying members in a group.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Experts believe dolphins genuinely experience bouts of grief. (Supplied: Geographe Marine Research)<\/p>\n

She says scientists, while reluctant to attribute human characteristics to animal behaviours, are fairly confident dolphins and other animals are genuinely experiencing bouts of grief “as humans know it” after loss.<\/p>\n

According to Ms Jolliffe, animals with high social cognition are recognised as being more intelligent and as a result more “vulnerable to mourning and grief”.<\/p>\n

Elephants, known for their curiosity and resourcefulness, rely on intricate social hierarchies that lend to epimeletic behaviours like burying deceased herd members, she says.<\/p>\n

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A pod of dolphins have guided a stranded juvenile whale out of an estuary.<\/p>\n

Researchers have also recorded emotional responses in apes and canines like wolves and dingoes.<\/p>\n

Orcas, tooth whales and baleen whales are also known to exhibit epimeletic behaviours.<\/p>\n

In particular, dolphins, which do not produce many offspring in their lifetime, invest a lot of energy into the ones they do have and are naturally “highly bonded to their calves”, she says.<\/p>\n

“Of all the observation of marine mammal species, female dolphins carrying deceased offspring account [for] 75 per cent of recorded cases,” Ms Jolliffe says.<\/p>\n

How long do dolphins typically mourn?<\/p>\n

According to experts, the standard period of time for a dolphin to hold onto their calf typically lasts between three and seven days.<\/p>\n

During that time, the pod stays close and checks in on the grieving mother, who is likely to stop feeding altogether.<\/p>\n

For Fraggle, the latest loss of the two-week-old calf marks the dolphin’s fourth bout of grief after losing its third calf in March last year.<\/p>\n

\"Dolphin<\/p>\n

The footage was captured by the non-profit conservation group Geographe Marine Research based in Dunsborough, WA. (Supplied: Geographe Marine Research)<\/p>\n

Mr Peterson says Fraggle was observed with last year’s calf for a few days.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, this time around, the dolphin held onto its two-week-old calf for 11 days, a period of time Ms Jolliffe says may never have been recorded in dolphins before.<\/p>\n

At the end of the period, Fraggle appeared distressed and there were little remains of the calf left.<\/p>\n

Despite this, Mr Peterson said Fraggle was back with the pod and a “happy” dolphin again the following day.<\/p>\n

Why is this case so remarkable?<\/p>\n

Fraggle has always given birth in cooler months and lost all four of its calves in seven years.<\/p>\n

The team wonders whether the mother’s extensive experience with grief might explain why this period endured longer.<\/p>\n

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Thousands of species have been discovered lurking and thriving in our oceans.<\/p>\n

Mr Peterson also says it might have something to do with slowed decomposition rates which allowed Fraggle to hold on longer.<\/p>\n

“You can have your theories,” he says.<\/p>\n

Either way, as one of the longest observations of a dolphin mother grieving, Ms Jolliffe says the group is hoping the case might be picked up for documentation.<\/p>\n

“Dolphins have emotional lives that we don’t fully understand,” Ms Jolliffe says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a scene akin to a funeral procession, a pod of dolphins surrounds a grieving mother as it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[241619,5263,231448,15232,241620,90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-730971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-capri-jolliffe","tag-dolphins","tag-geographe-marine-research","tag-marine-biology","tag-rodney-peterson","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}