Overview
- - Project CETI, which published two studies Thursday in Science and Scientific Reports, analyzed drone video and underwater audio from a 2023 birth off Dominica.
- - An 11-whale group, mostly adult females with one adolescent male, surrounded the mother during a 34-minute delivery and then took turns holding the calf at the surface.
- - Newborn sperm whales sink at first because they are negatively buoyant, so repeated lifting kept the calf breathing until it could swim on its own.
- - The helpers came from two matrilines that usually forage separately, showing coordinated turn-taking by both kin and non-kin in the hours after birth.
- - Audio captured shifts in click patterns at key moments and during a brief encounter with pilot whales, and machine learning mapped each whale’s role as the calf, later seen alive a year on, underscores a rare dataset that still reflects a single documented event.