Tahlequah did it again.
This orca, known in the scientific world as “J35”, had already broken our hearts in 2018, when she carried the body of her dead calf for 17 days, refusing to let her go. During that time, she traveled more than 1,600 kilometers through the waters of the Pacific Northwest. But this would not be the last time Tahlequah would be at the center of a scene like this.
At the end of December 2024, researchers at the Center for Whale Research confirmed that Tahlequah had become a mother again. Her new calf was a female identified as J61, but the joy lasted only a few days: shortly afterward, it was confirmed that she had died.
It was then that the pain of loss led the orca to repeat the heartbreaking behavior that made her known around the world. On January 1, 2025, she was photographed pushing the corpse with her snout near Seattle. Nine days later, she was still carrying it, this time off the coast of Victoria, British Columbia.
Dr. Michael Weiss, of the Center for Whale Research, acknowledged that other orcas carry dead calves, but none keep doing so for as long as she does.
“There is something about her as an individual that makes this behavior more pronounced”, he said. No one yet knows what it is.
But perhaps the question is no longer whether animals feel loss, but how much of that pain we are still incapable of understanding.