Eleven Days at Sea: Fraggle, The Bat, And The Limits Of Knowing Another Mind

Grieving-Dolphin-Madras-Courier
Image of Fraggle. Screen grab of a video in the public domain.
Fraggle carried her dead calf through the water for eleven days. Whatever that was like for her, it was like something. That fact does not require our understanding to be true.

Recently, a well-known bottlenose dolphin named Fraggle was found and filmed around Leschenault Estuary, south of Perth, Australia, by Geographe Marine Research. Fraggle carried her dead calf for eleven long days, apparently trying to keep it from sinking into the depths, where hungry predators would have torn it apart. The video that circulated widely showed a pod of about a dozen dolphins surrounding the grieving mother. Marine biologists confirmed that Fraggle had already lost three calves before this one.

The footage of cetacean grief created a stir. Social media, news channels, newspapers, marine biologists, and a vast number of viewers across the world reported it and offered their views, sympathising with a mother for whom carrying the dead weight of her calf for eleven consecutive days, while eating nothing, was not only a physically onerous task but one that appeared emotionally shattering.



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