Watch the first video of a sperm whale birth captured by scientists

Watch the first video of a sperm whale birth captured by scientists Skip to content Subscribe today Every print subscription comes with full digital access Subscribe Now Menu All Topics Health Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology View All Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes View All Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment View All Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics View All Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology View All Magazine Menu All Stories Multimedia Reviews Puzzles Collections Educator Portal Century of Science Unsung characters Coronavirus Outbreak Newsletters Investors Lab About SN Explores Our Store SIGN IN Donate Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 SIGN IN Search Open search Close search Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 All Topics Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology Tech Computing Artificial Intelligence Chemistry Math Science & Society All Topics Health Humans Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Recent posts in Humans Paleontology Early apes may not have evolved in East Africa By Jake BuehlerMarch 26, 2026 Science & Society Social media can be addictive, a jury finds. 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Project CETI By Lily Burton March 26, 2026 at 2:15 pm Share this:Share Share via email (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Share on X (Opens in new window) X Print (Opens in new window) Print It takes a village to deliver a whale calf. The birth of a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) has been captured on camera in more intimate detail than ever before, researchers report March 26 in Science. The female sperm whale giving birth was aided by 10 other sperm whales, almost all female, but not all kin. The footage makes clear that, like humans, sperm whales benefit from cooperation, so much so that the instinct to help transcends family barriers. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday. “Not only did we capture such an amazing dataset, but we actually knew each of these whales,” says marine biologist David Gruber, who leads Project CETI, a nonprofit based partly in the Caribbean island Dominica dedicated to sperm whale research. That made it possible to tease out the role of each whale in the birthing process. Observing the birth of a whale is extremely rare, and there have been only a handful of scientific studies that describe a sperm whale birth. While scientists had seen sperm whales helping each other during birth before, none of those accounts were recorded on video. In 2023, off the coast of Dominica, Gruber and colleagues used two aerial drones to record the 34-minute birthing process. The group of whales surrounded the laboring mother, named Rounder. After delivery, the group took turns lifting the newborn to the surface for hours, so it could breathe air until it could swim on its own. Adult female sperm whales act as a raft for the newborn, which is prone to sinking in the first few hours after birth. This is the first video of sperm whale birth captured by scientists.Project CETI The team computationally defined each whale’s position in stills from the footage over time. A team member with the most knowledge of the whales then tracked which whale was which. The team was then able to see how each whale’s role in the birth related to kin relationships. The gathering included groups belonging to two different female lines that do not typically spend time together searching for food. Analyzing the video revealed that until several hours after the birth, the whales from the two groups fully mixed together, and they all participated in supporting the newborn at some point. The four whales that maintained the most consistent contact with the calf included the calf’s mother, aunt, an elder kin member and a whale from outside the kin group. “The baby sperm whale is negatively buoyant, and so it would have sunk,” says Gruber, which is why it is so important to have cooperative care following the birth. Similar behaviors involving pushing newborns to the surface has been observed in killer whales, belugas and other cetaceans. Gruber says this behavior potentially goes back to when those species shared a common ancestor. The researchers also recorded audio and, with additional colleagues, analyzed it by graphing the whale sounds by characteristics such as rhythm. The specific sounds that the sperm whales made, also known as codas, changed during important moments in the process, they report March 26 in Scientific Reports. One coda was heard more frequently during the birth. There was also more variability in the