'She has lost someone dear': Professor hopes orca's 'grief swim' spurs ethics rethink

In this photo provided by NOAA Fisheries, the orca known as J35 (Tahlequah) carries the carcass of her dead calf in the waters of Puget Sound off West Seattle, Wash., on Jan. 1. The calf died more than two weeks ago but the mother whale has been spotted still carrying the carcass in waters just off Victoria. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Candice Emmons/NOAA Fisheries

As the female orca known as Tahlequah once again carries the body of a dead calf through waters near Vancouver Island, for the second time in seven years, researcher Barbara J. King says there’s no mistaking the nature of the phenomenon.

King said she’s “more convinced than ever that animals, many animals, are expressing grief that emerges from love.”

“I do feel that more and more scientists are embracing these words, full stop,” said the author of the 2014 book “How Animals Grieve.”

“There have been more and more credibly documented reports across species of animals expressing sorrow when they survive the death of a loved one.”

On Thursday, the Washington-state-based Center for Whale Research said in a Facebook post that the mother, also known as J35, was seen pushing the remains of a calf on Jan. 10 between Vancouver Island and San Juan Island in Washington state. That was at least 10 days since the death of the calf, whose body Tahlequah was initially observed pushing on New Year’s Eve.

In 2018, Tahlequah captured worldwide attention when she carried the body of a calf for 17 days.

King said the way Tahlequah’s first “grief swim” was interpreted has now “been affirmed by everything we’ve come to know about animal emotions.”

When King took the stage in Vancouver for a Ted Talk about animal grief in 2019, she began with the story of Tahlequah.

King said she’s grieving again, along with the orca mother.

“I do call her Tahlequah, and not by her alphanumeric,” said King, who is emerita professor of anthropology at Virginia’s William & Mary public university, and a research fellow at PAN Works, a centre for animal ethics. “I feel connected to her as another mammalian mother, and I felt great sorrow in hearing this news.”

But it’s not just orcas that grieve. King’s research cites grief and mourning among a range of animals, from baboons, to elephants, cats and ducks.

King said scientists are now embracing the idea that animals experience sorrow and loss, which wasn’t always the case.

She said that when she was getting her education, using such words to describe animals' emotions wasn’t the norm.

“We had to say that animals spent time in proximity or they exhibited an unusual facial expression, and we avoided those emotion words,” King said.

But, she added, “the field has really changed.”

King said orcas are highly intelligent animals that form tight social bonds, aware of their surroundings and relationships, and Tahlequah’s behaviour indicates she is indeed mourning the death of her calf.

“I am as sure as I can be in a scientific framework that there’s an expression here of her sorrow,” King said.

“We know by now that animal joy, animal sorrow, animal fear, animal happiness, animal grief, the whole gamut exists. So these emotions don’t (just) belong to humans.”

King said it is important to limit “fanciful interpretations” of animal behaviours, but she said Tahlequah’s actions in recent weeks are clear.

“This is seeing an animal who is repeatedly telling us that she has lost someone dear to her, and she is expressing that to us,” she said.

She said she hopes people will be “galvanized” by Tahlequah’s tragedy to think more deeply about how people treat animals and their environments.

King said people seem willing to care about certain animals like chimps, orcas and elephants, over others such as dairy cows whose calves are taken from them soon after birth, and whose mothers also appear to grieve the separation.

“There’s a very interesting sort of set of biases about who we admit into this club, our moral circle,” she said. “For me, it’s what is the next step to make a difference for these animals so that we are not contributing to the harms and the deaths of these orca calves in this pod and in others.

“What I want to do is find a way as best I can to galvanize people to say, ‘I care about Tahlequah, OK? Here’s what I’m going to do about it,’” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 18, 2025.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press