proomt

Search

Search posts, papers, and topics

All posts

Hacker News front pageGriffith University2 min readintro

Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

Read on phys.orgHN 243·185 comments

Summary

Researchers filmed a humpback whale mother staying with her stillborn calf for hours, marking the first documented postmortem attendance in baleen whales. The finding suggests strong maternal attachment and calls for more systematic study of death‑related behavior in large whales.

  • A humpback mother was observed remaining with a stillborn calf for several hours or days, showing eye contact and close positioning.
  • This is the first documented case of postmortem attendance in a baleen (filter‑feeding) whale.
  • The observation highlights the need for systematic documentation of neonatal mortality events to understand cognitive and emotional aspects of whale behavior.
2/10
marine biologyanimal behavior

Related reading

  1. California Sea Lion, Brandt's Cormorant

    This post documents a personal wildlife sighting by Simon Willison in Pillar Point Harbor, California, featuring photos of a California Sea Lion and a Brandt's Cormorant. It also notes the subtle appearance of a previously sighted Northern Gannet in one image.

    Simon Willisonsimonwillison.net1 min

  6. Do LLMs Have the Memory of a Goldfish?

    The article explains that LLMs don’t have persistent personal memory; all “memory” is supplied by the surrounding application via the context window, summaries, or external storage. It outlines the distinction between trained weights, working‑memory (token context), and persistent application memory, shows how to construct API calls to preserve conversation state, and discusses the cost and laten…

    ByteByteGobytebytego.com12 min