The Daily Beast - Rare Photos - Sperm Whales Adopt Dolphin - January 25, 2013

Toronto-born researcher Alexander Wilson captured these rare photos of a group of sperm whales that adopted a dolphin with a curved spine.

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Photos ©Alexander D. M. Wilson/Aquatic Mammals

 While the group is socializing near the surface, the dolphin rubs its body in a friendly way against one of the whales. The whales sometimes rub back.

An unusual, mixed-species group consisting of sperm whales and a single bottlenose dolphin with a spinal malformation swim together in the Azorean archipelago.

The dolphin positions himself just in front of the open jaws of an adult female sperm whale. Calves and subadults do this, too, but the reason is unknown.

The dolphin nuzzles one of the whale calves with its rostrum (snout).

 

See video here

 

Toronto-born ecologist, Alexander Wilson.

Comments

[Phyllis]

The photos are truly amazing and then I started to wonder - would this condition be painful? Is there anyway that you could tell?

[Joanna Twaite]

Well if this dolphin is in pain, hydro therapy is what relieves it in animals and humans ~ so this dolphin is in the right place all the time. No matter what, dolphins like humans are pod animals ~ need company of others to remain happy, and I guess the regular dolphins would swim too fast for this soul to keep up ~ but Sperm Whales move much slower.

Now if all humans could be as accepting as these Sperm Whales are to disabled people.... What a wonderful world this would be!

[Lyle]

There are many instances of higher mammals (dogs and cats) playfully interacting, even birds and dogs can become friends. I guess its not too farfetched that, even in the wild, complex inter-species creatures like to hang out.

[Mary Jo Verissimo]

I love seeing things like this, warmth and love. It makes me feel happy yet sad. Happy to know that these Sperm Whales except the dolphin but sad to know if the dolphin's family rejected it because of his/her deformity. Animals/mamals alway except each other most often then humans do with each other.

[Newfie]

This is certainly very neat and interesting, but as a couple of you have said not by far the first account of such interspecies relationships. I remember watching a few years ago a documentary about a female lion who had adopted a baby gazelle. That's right, what would normally have been an animal she would have eaten, she was taking care of. It was thought the lion may have lost its own young and her motherly instincts were still very strong, and started raising the gazelle, who may have lost its own mother. Locals their said it was not the first time they had witnessed such a thing.