Tahlequah, The Grieving Orca, Loses Another Calf, Carries Dead Body Around

In a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, an orca who made headlines in 2018 after it carried her dead calf for more than two weeks, has once again lost her baby, according to a report in The Guardian. The mother whale, known as J35 aka Tahlequah, was seen with the new calf on December 20 but on Wednesday (Jan 1), it could be photographed, carrying the baby whale's carcass on her head.

"We were able to confirm J35 had lost the calf and she was pushing it around on her head," said Brad Hanson, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The scientists were initially hopeful that the calf, known as J61 would survive, despite the health complications but the situation turned pear-shaped quickly. As per the researchers, whenever the calf appears to be sinking, Tahlequah does a "high arch dive to go down" and recovers the dead body. However, scientists are unsure whether or not she's pushing it at that point or grabbing it.

Notably, Tahlequah's first calf was born 14 years ago and is still alive while her third was born in 2020 and is also healthy. The two calves to die were both female.

"The death of any calf in the [endangered southern resident population] is a tremendous loss, but the death of J61 is particularly devastating, not just because she was a female, who could have one day potentially led her own matriline but also given the history of her mother J35 who has now lost two out of four documented calves - both of which were female," Washington state-based Center for Whale Research.

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J35 first shot to prominence in 2018 when she pushed the body of her calf around the Salish Sea for 17 days. Experts suggest that carrying the dead calves is most likely an expression of grief from the mother killer whale. Since orcas have the same neurotransmitters and hormones as humans, it is highly plausible that their feelings highly resemble that of us with grieving and mourning a central part of it.

J35 is part of a critically endangered subpopulation of killer whales known as southern resident killer whales. With the death of her calf and the recent birth of a different orca, the group's number stood at just 73.