Nature

Touching tale of a baby whale

I hope you all must have heard about this baby whale in Sydney. This month in every year, whales take part in their migration towards Queensland and pass through the Sydney harbor. This 2 week old baby whale was estranged from her mother and lost her way. She was hungry. And what happened next was heart breaking.

She mistook a boat as her mother and started sucking the bottom of the yacht. The whale rescuers were called up. They tried to make her meet some other whales so that some female whale could adopt her, but this didn’t happen.  Another morning, the baby whale was found suckling the bottom of another boat. She had not eaten for days and her condition was becoming worse.

Wild life experts and rescuers tied their best to save her. The only option was to her find another mother to adopt her, but this was not happening. Normally, baby whales suckle for 11 months on mother’s high fat milk and put on 2 pounds a day. This calf was not getting anything to eat and was suckling the boat desperately.  

They tried to feed her with an artificial device. A mother whale squirts the milk out which goes inside the baby’s mouth and is sealed by a specially designed tongue to prevent salty water to go in. Scientists couldn’t replicate the nature’s design and hence all efforts to save her failed.

This event caused much anguish in Sydney and touched a lot of people across the world who kept a track of the attempts to save her. Ultimately the only thing that they could do was to inject her with a lethal injection of anaesthetics, to save her from the pain.