Do whales grieve? Rare footage of humpback alongside stillborn calf suggests they might | Olaf Meynecke for the Conversation

The behaviours we observed could represent grief, but they could also reflect maternal attachment, confusion or instinctive caregiving

It was a tragic sight.

One day last July, a newborn humpback whale calf lay motionless on the seafloor, just a kilometre off Australia's Gold Coast. The encounter was captured through underwater video.